


pills don't help, but it sure is funny

by thedragonsarecats



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben/Klaus bromance TO THE FUCKING MAX, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Drama, Gen, I try to be accurate to canon characterizations but, Luther Unfriendly, No Incest, Not Canon Compliant, Not Luther friendly, Self-Indulgent, Slow To Update, Sober Klaus, actually, but because of Canon Divergence there is unfortunately no romance I'm sorry, dave is there, they are the best brothers honestly, you can probably see my preferences from a mile away ha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-11-12 16:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18014345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedragonsarecats/pseuds/thedragonsarecats
Summary: “Calm down,” Bed advised, sage as ever. And then, after a moment of contemplative thought, “Luther’s totally gonna ask you to summon Dad.”“Fuck!” Klaus cried, slapping both hands against his face in distress, “I hate family reunions!”...Klaus gets sober a year before his Dad dies. It doesn't stop the apocalypse, but it sure as hell makes it a lot more interesting.





	1. he calls the mansion not a house but a tomb

Klaus is the only one of his siblings to actually get the call when their Father dies, which, all things considered, is pretty sad.

The other’s got the information second hand: Luther from mission control, Allison from the paparazzi, and both Diego and Vanya get it from the news—the former catches it in the middle of his nightly vigilante escapades, while the later finds herself staring into the window of an electronics store as the headline blared across the screen. Five isn’t even there to _get_ the call and Ben saw it in the unusually apathetic lines of Klaus’s face as he set the landline down on the counter.

“The bastard’s dead.” Klaus shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, “Pogo wants us to be home in two days for the funeral.”

“You mean he wants you,” Ben pointed out, raising one eyebrow from underneath his jacket’s hood.

“Me, us, what’s the difference?” Klaus shrugged, a grin tugging at the edges of his mouth as he slung an arm around Ben’s shoulders to jostle his brother’s ghost playfully, “We’re a package deal, my dear dead brother.”

Ben leaned his head on Klaus’s shoulder and asked, “You think the others are going to come?”

“No, duh.” Klaus bumped his head against Ben’s, “Luther never stopped being up Dad’s ass, and Allison never stopped being up _his_. Diego’s just gonna go to see Mom without having to deal with the prick, and Vanya’s…” He waved his free hand flippantly, “She’s a fucking wild card, honestly. She’s either gonna feel so guilty about her trashy autobiography that she’ll come, or she’s gonna stay home because she thinks Diego’s gonna gut her.”

“ _So_ insightful.”

“I know, right?” Klaus grinned, “Sober me’s like, twice as funny.”

“Zero times zero is still zero.”

“Shut _up!”_ Klaus whined, crossing his arms to pout properly, “Jokes about our sucky family are _always_ funny. It’s like Newton’s fourth law, or whatever.”

“Your bad sense of humor has to do with physics?”

“No!” Klaus insisted, “It’s an absolute fact of the universe. What’s still stays still, what’s in motion stays in motion _blah blah blah_ jokes about the Hargreeves shitty home lives are _always_ funny. I bet you’ll find it in like, every physics textbook.”

“Did you ever even open _our_ physics textbook?” Ben snorted.

“That is _not_ the point and you know it!” Klaus placed his hands on his hips, and after a moment, tilted his head to the side, “What do you even bring to the funeral?”

“Black clothes and a ouija board.” Ben deadpanned.

“Ha, ha. I meant besides the obvious, _genius_.” Klaus paused, and then jabbed a finger in Ben’s face, “I already knew about the black clothes, and in case these—” He brandished his tattooed palms in a poor approximation of jazz hands, showing off the _HELLO_ and _GOODBYE_ inked across the skin, “—weren’t enough, I probably have an old one stuffed under my bed or some shit.”

Klaus tucked his palms underneath his arms and rocked on his heels, “You don’t think Luther’s gonna ask me to summon Dad, do you? _Oh my god_ , what if he asks me to summon _Dad_? Him and Allison are gonna gang up on me, and Diego is gonna try to kill Luther for even _thinking_ about bringing the old man back, and then _Vanya_ is gonna do her dumb thing where she _clearly_ wants to say something, but _doesn’t_ because Dad messed her up as much as the rest of us, _which is exactly why I don’t want to summon him!”_

“Calm down,” Bed advised, sage as ever. And then, after a moment of contemplative thought, “Luther’s totally gonna ask you to summon Dad.”

“Fuck!” Klaus cried, slapping both hands against his face in distress, “I _hate_ family reunions!”

…

Two days later, and Klaus arrived early to reminisce, hug his Mom, and properly loot the old man’s office before any of the others get there and tried lecture him. He wore his favorite black jacket, lined with fluffy faux fur because it was appropriate for the occasion, his Father used to hate it, and, most importantly, it had gigantic pockets that were perfect for stuffing expensive treasures from his Dad’s collection that he can pawn to buy the next _Immortal_ album. Ben reminded him to bring his ratty messenger bag for the larger stuff, and Klaus decided to reward his brother for the genius by buying tickets for that movie Ben wanted to see after the funeral was over.

The house wasn’t any less creepy than he remembered, only half lit with heavy curtains blocking the light of day and weird statues in every corner. As he goes upstairs he blatantly flipped every light switch he can find on, a small act of rebellion.

He did the same in the office too, once he closed the door behind him he switched on each of Dad’s obnoxious ornamental lamps. He opened the curtains and windows for good measure, and enjoyed his petty revenge by flooding the ominous office with bright light.

Klaus dumped the messenger bag on the desk and stretched his arms above his head until his shirt rode up and his joints cracked. He groaned in relief, then after a moment his fists glowed blue and Ben solidified from where he sat in Dad’s chair, feet kicked up on the desk and hands folded neatly behind his head. 

“What’d you think, Benny-boy?” Klaus tucked his hands behind his head and strolled into the center of the room, “How many hours until the others get nostalgic enough to enter dear old Dad’s office and reminisce about all the times he sat in here ignoring us?”

“At least three.”

“That’s probably enough time to loot the old man for all he’s worth,” Klaus clapped his hands together. “Right, you get the desk. I’ll take—” He spun around, and waved vaguely to the rest of the room, “Everything else.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Ben agreed, kicking his feet off the desk and opening one of the random side drawers. He stared at it blankly for a minute, and then glanced back up to where Klaus was humming pleasantly and messily making his way through one of the book shelve while he rocked on his heels. He nicked a silver book end before Ben finally spoke up, voice soft and hesitant, like when they were kids. “Hey… Klaus?”

“Yeah?” Klaus glanced over his shoulder absently, “Find anything interesting?”  
  
“Not yet, but…” Ben shook his head, “You know… You know you probably wouldn’t have gotten here first if you weren’t sober.”

“Hangovers _are_ a bitch,” Klaus agreed lightly, plucking a weird statue off the shelf. He held it up for Ben’s inspection. It was probably gold, but the light radiating from Klaus’s hand tinged it a bright blue.  “Hey, is this gilded in gold?”  
  
“Uh, probably,” Ben confirmed, watching as Klaus tucked it neatly into his pocket, “I mean—I just—I know it’s kind of weird to point this out while we’re lifting things from our dead Dad’s office, but—

“ _I’m_ the one lifting things, actually,” Klaus moved to another section of the book shelf, leaning into his hip as he surveyed it, “You’re just talking. Either find some of the cash Dad’s got stuffed in those drawers or I’m not buying you that book you wanted.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright…” Ben gave a small smile, reaching into the desk and beginning to shift through the pile of paper. He found an expensive looking pen pressed between the paper and the back of the wooden drawer, and tossed it into Klaus’s open messenger bag without a second thought. Ben stared at his hand for a second after, and thought that a little more than a  year ago he was lucky enough for Klaus to be sober enough to even notice him. Now, he could harness his power enough that Ben could loot their Father’s desk while Klaus stole figurines off the shelves to pawn for money. Money that would go to _movie tickets_ and _metal albums_ instead of drugs to keep the ghosts at bay. It left a weird, warm feeling bubbling in his chest, and being the only member of his family—dead or alive—who was at least _somewhat_ adapt at emotions it didn’t take Ben more than a few seconds to identify it for what it was: pride.

They worked in silence for a while. Klaus stole anything that looked even slightly valuable, and everytime his pockets started to bulge he came back over to the desk to empty them into his bag. Dad’s shelves started to look a lot less cluttered as the time passed, and two hours in Klaus had given up on finding anything else of value. He sat legs crossed on the windowsill and worked on organizing his finds in the messenger bags until the fabric stopped bulging quite so obviously.

By that time cars had started to pull in, and Klaus would absently glance into the street as one by one his siblings arrived home. Dad’s office was on the street corner of an alleyway, so he could only catch scant glances of each of them as they walked from the house to the door. Soon, the only one missing was Vanya, and Klaus was loosely debating with himself whether or not she’d actually show up.

It would certainly be interesting if she did; Diego clearly hadn’t kicked his habit of openly wearing knife holsters everywhere he went, and Klaus was willing to bet money he hadn’t kicked his temper either.

“Hey, you find anything else?” Klaus asked, “‘Cuz I think we should skedaddle soon before Luther catches us and pulls his whole—” Klaus held up his fingers in air quotes and lowered his voice in a mocking impression of his brother, “— ‘I’m the Team Leader and I’m Number One so you must listen to me and stop stealing Dad’s things because even though you left the team ten years ago I still think I’m the boss of you’—hey, Ben are you even listening? You _love_ my Luther impression!” Klaus looked up, and saw Ben rifling through a bunch of bound journals and manilla file folders. “Ooooh what are those?”

  
“They’re on us,” Ben held two up, and true enough, Klaus saw both their names printed on the top in their Father’s loopy handwriting. Klaus made grabby hands at his brother, and Ben stretched over so that Klaus could grab them. “I found them in the bottom drawer.”  
  
“We should totally read these,” Klaus told him, a grin stretched across his face, “I mean, Dad’s always told me to my face what a huge disappointment I was to him, y’know? But to read it in his horrible handwriting after he’s died…” Klaus clapped a hand to his chest, “I just might cry!”

Ben rolled his eyes, “Put those away and come here. I found something else.”

“Don’t tell me you found his secret porn stash. That would be too much of a gift,” Klaus told him seriously as he zipped up both folders into the pocket on the side. He stood up, and leaned a hand against his hip, “Is it, like magazines? Or are they like those creepy black and white polaroids old people jerk off to in movies.”  
  
“Shut up. Just look.” Ben handed him a thick red book. Their father’s initials were printed on the front in bright gold letting: RH, “I found a few of those volumes. Most of them are on the desk or openly in drawers. That one was in this fancy box. He has notes on all of us in there, but…”

Klaus leaned back against the wall and began flipping through the pages, gaze catching on a few words here and there, “But?”

“The date is from when we were little kids. When our powers were coming in.”  
  
“Yeah? What’s so important about that?” Klaus looked up, “What kind of box?” Ben held up the box in question, baby blue and encrusted with pearls. “Now _that_ looks like a real money maker! Why are we focused on this dumb journal Dad has of us again?”  
  
“Focus will you, Klaus?” Ben tapped the desk impatiently, “That thing is from when we were kids, right? So why the hell is half of it about _Vanya._ ”

“Because she doesn’t have powers? He probably did a fuck ton of his ‘tests’ on her to see if she manifested or some shit.”

“True…But didn’t Dad perform plenty of tests on the two of us?” Klaus’s shoulders jerked, “So shouldn’t we be in there more, shouldn’t we?”

“You think I know, Benji?” Klaus shrugged, as his glowing fingers played at the edge of the book and lit the pages up blue, “Dad worked in weirdass— _Allison_!”

He scrambled to stand up straight as his sister slid open the door, looking slightly baffled to see her junkie brother standing there and staring at seemingly nothing. The blue glow extinguished from his hands before she was even completely through the door, and the fancy box Ben was holding clattered back to the desk. Instincts from rehab (and trying to nurture a drug habit in the same household as the ever vigilant Sir Reginald Hargreeves) kicked in, and Klaus’s formerly junkie body seemed to follow the age old reflex of _get rid of the evidence now now now,_ even though Klaus’s recently sober mind _knew_ that throwing the _very important_ and _slightly-kind-of-very suspicious_ book out the window so that Allison wouldn’t see him riffling through their Father’s old records was probably the worst idea he’d had all day. But it happened and the book was gone.

“Klaus?” Allison stepped towards him, “ What are you doing in here?”

“Oh, y’know…” Klaus trailed, walking forward until the two of them met at the middle in front of Dad’s desk (which he was very determinedly _not_ looking at since he could feel the damn glare Ben was giving him for throwing the book out the window like an _idiot_ ), “Long time, Allison.” The exasperated edge at her smile meant she could definitely read through his not-subtle subject change. But she wouldn’t question it further, which he guessed was the one benefit to being the family junkie—recovered or otherwise. He opened his arms for a hug, “C’mere!”

The hug was mostly one sided. Allison stood loosely as Klaus wrapped his arms around her, and she only reached to return the hug a second before he pulled away.

“I wanted to see you actually,” He grinned, and tucked his hands underneath his chin as he  tilted his head to the side cutely, “I just _have_ to get your autograph for my collection, sis!” She smiled at him: small, indulgent, and a little sad.

“Maybe later. How’ve you been?” Her voice was soft, non-threatening, “Get out of rehab, recently, Klaus?”

“No, no!” It stung a bit, he wasn’t gonna lie. But then again, he hadn’t seen her in years, and the only calls she ever got from him were probably more _about_ him. Like a year ago when he overdosed. The hospital had probably called _all_ his siblings for that one, actually. He’d been dead for a couple minutes and been in a coma for a week. Met God, too. She was a cute kid. It was nice to know Allison cared enough to ask, even if she or any of the others never visited. “No, no, I’m done with all that.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, glanced at Ben from the corner of his eye, “Have been for a while actually.”

“Really?” Allison didn’t even try to hide her doubt. Klaus felt like his movie star sister should have been a bit better at lying.

“Really!” Klaus swiped half the papers Ben had been looking at off the desk (and _Christ,_ that was just another thing for him to be irritated about, wasn’t it?) and flopped back on it, ankles crossed, and palms digging into the desks wooden edges, “I just came down here to prove to myself that the old man really is dead. And is he ever!” Klaus clapped his hands together brightly, “Know how I know?”  
  
“You used your powers?” Allison asked dryly.

“Because if he were alive,” Klaus continued, placing his hands on his hips and looking around the room, “Not one of us would be allowed to set foot in this damn room.” Allison glanced down at the desk. She ran her hand across papers and fiddled with the edges of the bronze telescope he and Ben had determined was too heavy to drag out of the room without anyone noticing. “He was always in here, our whole childhood…” Klaus leaned further back and bent his neck so he stared Ben in the eyes, “Always plotting his next torment, right?” Ben cracked a smile.

“Remember how he used to look at us too? That scowl?” Klaus pointed over his shoulder, and Allison’s eyes trailed up to the old oil painting of their Dad on the mantle, “Thank Christ he’s not our real Father…” He glanced back at Allison and grinned as he peeled back his eyelids, “Or did you want to inherit those _cold dead eyes!_ ” He got a laugh out of her for that one, slight but true. He made his voice higher and forced it to crack as easily as he used to pop pills, “ _Number Three.”_

“Get off his desk.”

Klaus swung towards the voice on instinct, and recognized it even though he hadn’t seen his brother since the mission that ended it all. Luther’s voice was deeper than Klaus remembered, but just as solemn and serious as always. Klaus got the feeling he was supposed to be more cowed then he was, but Ben had leaned over his shoulder and whispered, “Looks like the fun police are here.” Which made it kind of hard to take Luther seriously.

He had to struggle not to laugh; Ben might’ve adored Luther to the point of hero worship when they were kids, but even _he_ thought their brother needed to take a metaphorical chill pill. Luther had never heard any of Ben’s snarky quips about him. Most of them, even before death, had always been reserved for Klaus. He’s probably a bad influence, now that he thinks about it.

“Oh, _wow_ , Luther,” Klaus slid off the desk, and glanced away from Allison to his brother. Christ, his now apparently _very big_ brother. What the hell happened? Did he hear Allison got divorced and decided that bulking up via steroids would win her back since it was obvious that his lack of _giant_ rippling pectorals put her off the first time and not his general personality? “Wow, man… You, uh. You really filled out over the years huh? I didn’t realize the Moon had a gym—”

“Klaus.”

“Oh, _please_ save the lecture,” Klaus held his hands up, chuckled nervously, and began to make a retreat towards the door. Ben, far less hesitantly, followed, and Klaus could just _feel_ his smirk burning in the back of his head. “You two can, uh, talk amongst yourselves. You’ve got a _lot_ to catch up on—” Luther stopped him with a hand to the chest, effortlessly strong as ever.

“Drop it.” Luther demanded.

“Oh shit.” Ben said, making eye contact with Klaus from around Luther’s arm, “Caught in the act.”

“Ex _squeeze_ me, brother dear?”

“Empty the bag, Klaus.” Luther’s gaze fell to the ratty messenger bag hanging across Klaus’s chest, “Do it. Now.”

For a moment, Klaus debated the pros and cons of properly conjuring Ben into the room and having him destroy both Luther and the entire office. It would be satisfying, make the world a better place, and take Ben less than a minute. But then Luther’s ghost would haunt him as much as Ben’s would, and really, Klaus does _not_ think he could deal with Luther 24/7 unless he was high, so sobriety would just go flying out the window along with Dad’s weird journal. Also, Allison would probably kill him and Ben probably wouldn’t agree to it in the first place. Damn.

“Alright, _alright_!” Klaus walked back and upended the messenger bag on the desk, watching as dozens of Dad’s expensive _nonsense_ fell out in a loud cacophony of metallic sorrow. Klaus watched them fall with an annoyed scowl, and turned back to face Luther as the silver bookend he’d pick first clattered onto the carpet, “He’s _dead_ y’know. Not here to care that I took an advance on my inheritance!”

Klaus rolled his eyes at Luther as he followed Ben out of the room in a huff. The door slammed shut behind him.

“You didn’t have to slam the door.” Ben told him.

“Oh shut up, it’s heavy and I’m too irritated to close the damn thing quietly,” Klaus told him with crossed arms and a pout, “Besides, Luther made me lose half my Death Metal money.”

“ _Only_ half?”

“I’m insulted at your poor assessment of my skills, Benji,” Klaus sniffed, patting the messenger bag lightly, “This bag has half a dozen more pockets than even Luther could find, _and_ I still have a few things in my coat.”

“Well, _sorry-,_ ” Ben rolled his eyes, “Just be sure not to throw our spoils out another window.”  
  
_“Oh my god,_ is a guy not allowed to be jumpy?”

“There’s a difference between _jumpy,_ and _throwing a book out of a goddamn window,_ Klaus.”

“Shut up!”

…

Klaus ends up, oddly enough, raiding his old room. Not to sell any of the shit, of course, anything even _remotely_ of monetary value he’d taken with him after Ben’s funeral and pawned off for cash. Now, shockingly enough, he was taking a more sentimental route.

He’d already found several old pictures piled neatly on the desk, no doubt by Mom. Klaus remembered pawning the frames for those when he was sixteen, and the lack of protection had left each one with small rips along the border and discolored dents on the corners. He found an old pair of headphones too; the same ratty ones he’d use to block out the ghosts after Dad’s many trips to the mausoleum. Klaus had stared at them for far too long before tucking them into the bag as gently as he did the photos.

Ben’s room was far more fun, if Klaus was being honest. Almost everything in it was untouched, and his brother had spent almost a decade following Klaus around and complaining about all the stuff lost to it. Klaus carried _stacks_ of old books from Ben’s shelves back to the bed for packing, whining loudly at the effort but secretly a little pleased at the beam on his brother’s face as draped himself on his desk chair and pointed at all the things he wants to take home with them.

“Bennio,” Klaus wheezed, hand pushing against his back after his fourth trip back and forth with almost half a dozen thick novels, “You know you’re my favorite sibling—”

“You haven’t even seen the others in ten years.”  
  
“—yeah, because they _suck_ , but you do realize that I’m like… weak as hell? There’s no way I can fit even half of these in my bag, and even if I _could_ I’d probably fall over and die from blunt force trauma before we even make it to the train.”  
  
“Diego can always give us a ride home.”

“That—” Klaus pointed accusingly at Ben, “—is not the point, and _you know it._ You gotta start, like, actually picking and choosing which shit you want to bring home instead of just pointing at anything vaguely interesting and expecting me, your _poor brother_ to carry it all!”

“You could always take multiple trips, dear. Bring some of Ben’s books home tomorrow so you don’t hurt your back.” After his debacle with the book earlier, Klaus was very proud that he didn't jump out of his skin when Mom appeared behind him. “I know your brothers and sister are going to be staying around for a few days. We could all have lunch together tomorrow.”

“We both know that won’t turn out well, Mom,” He told her, and turned in the doorway so they faced each other, “Diego’s gonna end up throwing a butter knife at Luther.”

“Now, now,” Mom smiled at him patiently, “Your brother knows that knife throwing is not allowed at the table. It will be nice,” Her voice wavered slightly, and Klaus reached out to grasp her shoulder, “It will be nice to eat as a family.”

“I’m voting for multiple trips.” Ben raised his hand.

“Oh shut up, Benji,” Klaus waved a hand over his shoulder, “ _You_ do not get a vote.”

Mom’s eyes softened, “Oh, is your brother here Klaus?” He nodded, turned into the room and pointed out the desk chair where Ben sat to her, “Hello, Ben. It’s been a while. I’ve missed you.” She looked up at Klaus, and gestured towards the pile of books on the bed that Ben had requested.  “Would you like some assistance in packing his things? I'll find some boxes to pack the books in.”

“That sounds perfect, Mom,” He patted her shoulder, and headed towards Ben’s cupboards to start collecting his brothers collectables, “I… maybe tomorrow I’ll conjure him for you.” He licked his lips, “After lunch?”  Klaus glanced over at where Ben sat, legs drawn up to his chest and following their Mom with sad eyes, “You up for that, Ben?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a date then!” Klaus clapped his hands together as Mom smiled.

“I’ll make your favorites, then.” She clasped her hands in front of her dress, “I’m going to go get those boxes from the kitchen. Don’t slack off now.” Klaus waved her away with a smile, and went back to sorting through the dusty old action figurines. The silence, as always with the two of them, didn’t last long.

“Hey, I know you want to bring like, all of these home and what not, but uh…” He plucked one of the Umbrella Academy figurines off the shelf and waved it in Ben’s direction, “Do we really need to bring Dad?”

“Those are collectables. It’s all part of a set, Klaus.”

“Great!” Klaus exclaimed, the word dripping with false cheer, “Can’t wait to bring the creepy Dad figurine home, and just… display him. Gonna be _great_ , go to make some waffles in the morning and BLAM.” Klaus shot his hands out and waved them in a spookier approximation of jazz hands.  “Creepy Dad Doll is just sitting on the counter.”

“I’ll just keep him in the box.” Ben’s smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, “I never said we had to display him.”

“And you wonder why you’re my favorite.” Klaus told him fondly.

…

“Sorry I’m late, sorry I’m late!” Klaus slid down the stairs and into the sitting room, “Mom told me we were meeting like ten minutes ago but I got distracted by—”

“Is that my skirt?” Allison asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“—Allison’s closet.” He concluded with a grin, and swished his hips so that the leather swirled, “I mean the leather’s a bit dated, and all, but it’s nice and breezy, and it’s _basically_ a furnace in here since we all insist on keeping the fireplace running in the middle of summer.”

“We should just get this started,” Luther sighed, standing up just as Klaus fell onto the couch next to Vanya, “So, I figured we could have a sort of memorial service for Dad at the courtyard at sundown. Just… say a few words at Dad’s favorite spot.”

“Dad had a favorite spot?”

“Yeah, you know, under the oak tree.” Allison looked at him blankly, and Klaus exchanged a _look_ with Ben from where he was perched on the sofa arm. A _Luther is still so oblivious about Dad after all these years_ kind of _look_ . “We used to sit out there all the time. None of you ever did that?” He swung around, and gave all his siblings a baffled look. God, barely two minutes into the family meeting and it was _physically painful._ Klaus had to do something. For the good of humanity, and the sake of his sanity.

“Well, this is just… _so much fun_ !” Klaus slapped his palms against his thighs and sat up, “How ‘bout we take a break before we go on with this unbearably uncomfortable chat! Any requests? Tea? Scones? I make a _mean_ cucumber sandwich if anyone’s interested…”

“What? No.” Diego snorted as Luther waved him off, and Klaus flashed his brother a grin. Glad to see that all that leather and knives didn’t stop him from having _some_ kind of sense of humor. “Listen up. There’s still some important things we need to discuss, all right? And then… you can make a cucumber sandwich, or whatever, Klaus.” Klaus clicked his tongue and shot Luther a pair of finger guns.

“Like what?” Diego asked flatly.

“Like the way he died.”

“Oh,” Diego scoffed, leaning back into the chair, “Here we go again.”

“I don’t understand,” Vanya spoke softly, hands gripped in her lap. Like she was still little Number Seven whose only job was to be quiet and stay out of the way of her other, _special_ siblings. Ten years later and it still irritated the fuck out of him. “I thought they said it was a heart attack.”

“Yeah, according to the coroner.” Luther responded.

“Well, wouldn’t they know?”

“...Theoretically.”

“Theoretically?” Allison leaned forward, eyebrow raised.  Diego was pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, like he’d had this argument with Luther before, and was sick of hearing him repeat it.

“I’m _just saying_ , that at the very least, _something_ happened.” Luther insisted, looking around, “The last time I talked to Dad, he sounded...strange.”

“Dad? _Strange?”_ Klaus snorted, “For our eighth birthday he gave us all tattoos. Strange was kinda the old geezer’s _thing.”_

“Strange how?” Allison ignored him as usual, and seemed to be the only one taking Luther completely seriously, _also_ as usual.

“He sounded on edge,” Luthor elaborated, “Told me I should be careful who I trust.”

“Luther,” Diego’s voice was almost gentle as he stood up. He spoke to Luther the way nurses at rehab had always spoken to Klaus; softly in an attempt to dull the harshness of their words. It never actually worked, but the thought was nice. “He was a paranoid, bitter old man who was starting to lose what was left of his marbles.”

“No.” Luther insisted, shaking his head as Diego approached, “He must have known something was going to happen.” And then he turned to Klaus, “Look, I know you don’t like to do it, but I need you to talk to Dad.” Don’t _like_ was a bit of an understatement, Klaus thought. _Hate_ was more accurate, and _despise_ was far more fitting. He didn’t exactly spend a decade pumping himself full of drugs to keep a power he _didn’t like_ at bay. But he guessed that was Luther; no matter how often Benny insisted that he cared, he would always, _always_ , belittle everyone else and their problems in the name of the _Cause_. Or, he supposed, in the name of Dad. Same difference in the end.

“And… there it is,” Ben said dryly. Klaus waved him off loosely, ignoring the way Allison scoffed into her drink.

“Uhh…” Klaus trailed for a moment and poked his finger into his cheek in false contemplation, “I’m gonna pass, thanks.

“What?” Luther demanded, “Your _Seance_ , Klaus, that’s your _thing._ ”

“ _Yeah_ , well, doesn’t mean I’m gonna _do_ it,” Klaus sniffed, tipping his head back against the couch, “I never called the prick up back when he was alive, so I’m sure as _hell_ not gonna do it when he’s dead.”

“Klaus, this is _important,_ ” Luther insisted again, as if reiterating the fact was gonna make him give any more shits about their Father’s death, “Dad was probably _murdered_ , Klaus, and your powers are probably our only lead into finding who did this to him.”

“Diego doesn’t think he was murdered,” Klaus pointed out and jerked his head in his other brother’s direction, “And neither does the coroner. Sorry, _Number One_ , but I’m not gonna try and summon Dad’s ass just because you have a cute little _hunch._ ”

Luther stared at him for a long moment in stony silence before he turned back to address the whole room again, “Well there’s also the issue of the missing monocle.”

“That was harsh,” Ben noted casually, “But you know he’s probably gonna ask again later. ”

Klaus sunk deeper into the couch, glaring at Ben out of the corner of his eye, “Well he can’t _make_ me,” He hissed petulantly, “All his ‘leadership’ powers are gone without Dad to enforce them.”

“Klaus are you even listening?” Luther interrupted, jerking his attention away from Ben, who grinned the same obnoxious grin he always did whenever Klaus got caught snarking off to him instead of listening to whatever else. “I’m _trying_ to tell you about Dad’s monocle, it’s been missing since he died, and no one can find it—”

“Who gives a shit about a stupid monocle?” Diego groaned under his breath. Klaus raised his hand in a _here here_ kind of gesture.

“Exactly.” Luther turned away from Klaus, _at last_ , and stared down Diego, “It’s worthless. So, whoever took it, I think it was personal.” He paused, “Someone close to him. Someone with a grudge.”

“Where are you going with this?” Klaus asked, incredulous, despite very well knowing _exactly_ where his dear brother was going with this.

“I thought it was obvious, Klaus.” Diego gave Luther a dirty look, “He thinks one of _us_ killed Dad.”

The silence in the wake of Diego’s words—and Luther’s subsequent lack of denial—was thick, heavy, and uncomfortable. Allison shifted in her seat and fixed Luther with the same disbelieving stare that Vanya and Klaus trained on him.

“I thought he was better than this,” Ben said softly, voice etched with the same brand of scorching disappointment he always used to train on Klaus when he OD’d. “I guess all those years on the moon knocked some sense out of Spaceboy.”

“Are you kidding me, Luther?” Klaus hissed, sitting up in full to make uncomfortable eye contact with him, “You do?”

“How could you think that?” Vanya demanded, voice quiet and cutting as always. Sitting here, watching as her sharp words made Luther flinch, Klaus absently wondered why any of them had been surprised that she had the stones to write her book.

“Great job, Luther,” Diego patted his shoulder in mock encouragement, and went to leave the room. “Way to lead.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“You’re crazy,” Klaus told him, as he pointedly stood up and brushed off his skirt, “You’re actually insane.”

“That’s _not_ what I’m saying!” Luther insisted, starting to sound somewhat pitiful.

“Yeah, uh huh, okay,” Klaus waved him off, rocking on his heels for a second before moving to follow Diego out. Vanya and Allison stood up to leave just as he did.

“Wait, where are you all going? I’m not done yet!”

“Yeah, actually you are.” Klaus told him, tucking his hands behind his head, “But it’s fine! I’ll be right back, just off to go murder Mom and then we can continue this fun little _chat_. Should only take a mo’.”

“That’s not what I was saying,” Luther repeated again, _definitely_ sounding pitiful this time around, “I didn’t—”

“Yeah, actually,” Klaus cut him off as he turned around the banister, “You kinda did.”

…

Somehow, for some reason, Klaus ends up back in the living room an hour later, staring at Dad’s urn with his hands on his hips and his face screwed up in determination.

“You know that’s not gonna do anything,” Ben told him, lying languidly across the couch with his head propped up on one hand, “Dad’s not gonna appear just because you glared at his ashes.”

“I don’t want him to appear!” Klaus insisted, leaning closer to the urn regardless, “I’m just… curious. Yeah, that’s it, curious!” He tapped it with the edge of his nail, “Because if _I_ was potentially murdered, and had an adopted son who could conjure the dead, I’d at least _try_ to manifest!”

“Maybe he’s stuck in your spam folder.”

"Nah,” Klaus tapped the urn again, more aggressively so that his nail chimed against metal, “He’s always been a stubborn old bastard. Old Reggie wouldn’t let himself be stopped by _me_ . _So why hasn’t he manifested?_ Not even once for a little “You’re my greatest disappointment” speech, and Dad _loved_ those. Murdered or not, why the hell isn’t the sadistic prick taking this chance to taunt me from beyond the grave?”

“He could want you to conjure him. Make you work for his disappointment instead of getting a free hand out.”

“Yeah, no dice,” Klaus snorted, poking the urn hard enough that it tipped slightly to the side, “I’m not putting in more effort to talk to him then I have to.” He tapped the urn again, harder, ignoring the way it rocked, “Here that you old _prick_ ?” Klaus’s nail clanged sharply against the metal, “If you got something important to say, I’m not coming to you, so just _say it_ —” The urn fell over with an obnoxious _clang_ , lid bouncing off, and Dad’s ashes spilling obnoxiously across the counter.

Klaus grabbed at it clumsily before it could fall off completely, tucking it to his chest in a panic that left his eyes wide in shock. “Oh, shit.” He stretched his neck over his shoulder to look back at Ben, who had scrambled into a sitting position and was now staring at Klaus appearing slightly alarmed, but mostly amused. One of his obnoxious little side smiles tugged at his lips, and Klaus just _knew_ Ben was thinking about the journal he’d accidentally thrown out the window earlier. _“Shut up!”_ Klaus hissed before Ben could say anything, _“I’m not having a good day!”_

…

Ben discovered a hand broom and dustpan behind the bar, and Klaus used it to somewhat successfully gather the split ashes of his Dad and dump them back to the urn. He brushed the rest casually off the counter as if it were dust, and then the two of them end up in the kitchen, where Klaus decided to make a sandwich, much to his brother’s horror.

He’s not sure if Mom had kept the kitchen stocked with all of her kids favorite foods over the years, or if in the wake of Dad’s death she sent out for them in hopes all her children would come home, but Klaus found the jar of his and Five’s favorite brand of peanut butter in the fridge and a bag of barbecue chips on the shelves next to the marshmallows and resolves to thank her later anyways.

“You are disgusting,” Ben informed him, nose wrinkled as he watched Klaus rip open the bag and press a handful of chips between two peanut butter covered slices of bread. “This is genuinely abhorrent.”

“Big word,” Klaus noted, crunching a spare chip between his teeth as he tossed the bag back on the shelf and placed the jar back in the fridge, “And also, you’re wrong. My sandwiches are the _best_!”

“Your cucumber sandwich is decent.” Ben admitted reluctantly, as he sat on the kitchen table and leaned on his legs. He winced dramatically as Klaus took his first, obnoxiously loud bite, opened his mouth to comment on it, but closed it as the drifts of muffled pop music filtered into the kitchen. “Is that…?”

Klaus snorted, and took another obscenely large bite from his sandwich, “Looks like Luther rediscovered his record player.” Ben bounced his head to the music and Klaus laughed, slapping his sandwich back onto the plate and twirling away to pick up Dad’s urn from the counter, pressing it to his chest as he swayed in a mockery of a slow dance.

Ben laughed, legs swinging off the table and leaning back on his hands as his feet tapped midair to the beat. Klaus beamed along with him, Allison’s skirt flaring out as he held Dad’s urn out in front of him, and spun in dizzyingly circles on his heels. After a moment he placed Dad’s urn back on the counter and reached out towards Ben, opening and closing his fingers in a grabby motion that clearly demanded that his brother come dance with him.

Ben rolled his eyes, and slid off the table, reaching out for Klaus’s hand to dance with him just like they did when they were kids.

And then thunder shook the house. The music cut out. White light blared from the window out into the courtyard and glass shattered somewhere upstairs. Klaus struggled to keep his footing as the ground shook. Knives shot passed him and embedded themselves in the wall with a loud _thunk._ Dad’s urn came flying off the counter and into his arms, and Klaus was so surprised that he looked down at it and went, voice pitching high, _“Daddy?”_

“That’s not Dad,” Ben’s hood was up and his hands tucked underneath his arms, all the lightness from a moment ago gone in an instant. He pointed his finger at the window that led out into the courtyard. Klaus followed Ben’s gaze and saw ripples of blue energy pulse against the glass.

Klaus blanched, “What? That’s…” He looked down at this own hands, wrapped around the urn, as if expecting them to glow with the shade of bright blue energy that he used to conjure the dead. The shade of bright blue energy that shook the house and threatened to crack the windows. “That’s not me… is it?”

“I don’t…” Ben trailed, face lit up blue, “I don’t think so. No, I don’t think you’re causing it, no.”

“Oh,” Klaus placed the urn down gently in a chair and ran his hand through his hair in relief. He screwed up his face, “Then what is?”

Ben flashed Klaus an irritated look, “How am _I_ supposed to know, idiot? Go investigate!”

“What? No! Why?” As if on cue, which Klaus honestly wouldn’t put it past, he heard the rumble of footsteps as the rest of his siblings bounded down the stairs and into the courtyard. Ben leveled him with a _look._

“Ugh, alright, fine.” Klaus threw his hands up in defeat, “But I’m taking the fire extinguisher with me!”

“I—okay? Just _hurry up!_ ”

Klaus, despite all sensible instincts telling him otherwise, ran out of the kitchen and into the courtyard with the fire extinguisher tucked under one arm as he fiddled with the nozzle.

“Out of the way!” He cried, as he shouldered his way past his siblings and sprayed a couple of quick spurts of foam into the mass of crackling blue energy that encompassed the enclosure. Unfortunately (and predictably, if you asked Ben, which Klaus _did not_ ), the foam did nothing. Frustrated, Klaus flung the entire thing at the swirl of energy and flinched back in surprise when it swallowed the fire extinguisher whole.

“What is _that_ gonna do?!” Allison demanded.

“I don’t know!” He cried, spreading his arms in defeat, “Do you have a better idea?” The electricity crackled sharply, and Klaus scrambled backwards as tendrils of energy began to spiral off and the mass’s center started to condense.

“Get behind me!” Luther ordered, ever the leader, and grabbed one of Klaus’s arms to tug him to relative safety.

“Yeah, get behind us!” Diego added, ever trying to show him up, and latched onto Klaus’s other arm.

“Why don’t we just run!” Klaus shouted and gestured desperately towards the house while the wind slapped at his face, “C’mon!”

“No, wait.” Ben broke his silence at Klaus’s side, and stared at the electric storm with idle curiosity instead of violent terror like the rest of them. Being dead gave his brother an _unfair_ sense of security. “ _Look—_ ”

A scream echoed in the courtyard. Hands, old and wrinkled and then suddenly young and smooth, pushed at the energy from the inside, from the _other_ side. Klaus caught a glimpse of neatly trimmed bushes and a wooden fence before a body dropped out of the storm and face first onto the ground with one last clap of thunder before the blue energy storm disappeared.

Sunlight bleed back into the world, and as one the six Hargreaves siblings moved cautiously towards the prone figure on the ground. The man—the _boy_ —peeled his face off the ground, climbed to his knees, and then feet, struggling with his balance. A scrap plastered across half his forehead, and leaves were mussed up in his hair, and as the siblings slowly came to a stop in front of him, Klaus found himself staring at the brother that had disappeared when they were twelve.

“Does anyone else little Number Five,” Klaus said hesitantly, gaze flickering over to where Ben stood, silent but eyes wide, “Or is that just me.”

Number Five looked down at himself, the way his suit fell overly large on his body and the jacket hung past his unwrinkled hands. He looked back up at his siblings, after years of not seeing them on either end, and Klaus had to hold back a nervous laugh when Five’s brow screwed up and he said, “ _Shit.”_

…

For the first time in almost two decades, all seven of the Hargreeves siblings were under the same roof, in the same kitchen, and watched with an almost unnatural captivation after Five led them there and then proceeded to slam a cutting board knife against the table.

Klaus thought they might have stayed silent forever, sitting and standing around one end of the table while Five maneuvered around to the bread box, but then Five demanded to know the date, and suddenly the spell was broken.

“The twenty-fourth.” Vanya told him, hesitantly.

“Of what?” Five asked impatiently, because he had asked for the _exact_ date.

“March.” She confirmed.

Five titled his head to the side in what Klaus thought was _relief_ , and began to unwind the top of the bread loaf, “Good.” He declares decisively, nodding to himself.

“So, are we going to talk about what happened?” Luther started, because for all of his brother’s faults beating around the bush certainly has never been one of them. Five ignored him, and adjusted two pieces of sliced white bread on the cutting board. Luther, frustrated as always at being ignored, rose from his chair and stood tall and broad in front of Five just as Klaus shot Ben a _look._ “It’s been seventeen years.”

Five scoffed, “It’s been a lot longer than _that._ ” He walked towards Luther, popped out of existence, only to poof back into it a second later to start ransacking the shelves for the marshmallows.

“I haven’t missed that.” Luther sighed.

Diego jerked his head in Five’s direction, and asked flatly, “Where’d you go?”

“The future.” Five grabbed the marshmallows from the top shelf and teleports back to the cutting board. Almost casually he offered, “It’s shit, by the way.”

“Called it!” Klaus stuck a finger in the air and grinned offhandedly in Ben’s direction. “On a scale from one to ten, how bad?”

“Thirteen.” Five answers, and reached to pull the jar of peanut butter from the fridge, “I should’ve listened to the old man. Y’know,” He slammed the door shut, “Jumping through space is one thing, but,” He started to unscrew the top of the jar, looked down at his sandwiches materials with scrutinization, “Jumping through time is a roll of the dice.” After a tense moment Five nodded appreciatively in Klaus’s direction, “Nice dress, man.”

“Oh!” Klaus looked down at his outfit with a grin, “ _Danke_ , I stole it from Allison’s room.”

“But how did you get back?” Vanya insisted, cutting off the edge of Klaus’s sentence by holding up a hand.

“In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every version of time.” Five shrugged, spreading peanut butter across bread with a nonchalance that suggested that both acts were equally easy.  It also, admittedly, kind of sounded like bullshit.

Diego called him out on it, “That makes no sense.”

“Well, it would if you were smarter.” Five dismissed him, and Diego stood with an angry hiss. Luther pressed a hand to his chest to keep him from moving forward. 

“How long were you there?” He asked lowly.

“Forty-five years,” Five said as he ripped open the bag of marshmallows, “Give or take.” Diego and Luther sunk back into their seats with shock.

“So you’re saying, that you’re _fifty-eight_?”

“ _No.”_ Five flashed a hard smile at Luther, all teeth, “My _consciousness_ is fifty-eight.” He pressed the top slice of bread on top of the peanut butter and marshmallows, “Apparently, my body is now _thirteen_ again.”

“Wait,” Vanya shook her head loosely, “How does that even work?”

One hand tucked loosely into his pocket, Five picked up his sandwich and stared blankly into the distance, “Dolores did say the calculations were off. Eh,” He offered, and then shrugged as he took a large bite from his sandwich. Next to him, Ben flinched in obvious disgust. “Bet she’s laughing now…” Five trailed wistfully turning back to them.

“Delores?” Vanya asked, but Five merely hummed in agreement, he gaze caught on the newspaper laying out on the counter. He picked it up with one hand and spared it a cursory glance. The headline, in large bold letters: _CITY SAYS GOODBYE TO REGINALD HARGREEVES: Umbrella Academy Founder Found Dead._

“Guess I missed the funeral.” Five sounded as emotionless and indifferent towards their Dad and his death as Klaus knew almost all of them (except Luther, of course) wished they could be.

“How do you know about that?” Luther asked.

“What part of _the future_ do you not understand?” Five said scathingly. Luther adjusted himself uncomfortably in his seat. “Heart failure, huh?”

“Yeah,” Diego said.

“No,” Luther said, simultaneously.

“Hm.” Five titled his head to the side and took another bite from his sandwich. Klaus thought he could see the barest bones of a smile in his brother’s eyes, “Nice to see nothing’s changed.”

…

By the time they start the service, it was raining. It’s appropriately dramatic enough for a man that adopted seven children in order to create a real-life superhero team because he thought the fate of the world was at stake. Klaus always thought the old man, on top of his usual eccentricities of course, had some form of early onset dementia or whatever.

It doesn’t really matter anymore. Since he’s. Y’know. _Dead._

They gathered in the courtyard, all huddled under black umbrellas except for Luther, who’s holding the ashes; Diego, who can’t hold an umbrella and angrily cross his arms at the same time; Ben, who can’t even hold an umbrella, much less get wet; and Klaus, who couldn’t find where exactly the rest of his family had found their black umbrellas and was instead trying to squeeze himself under a small pink one that he’d found in the back of the coat closet.

“Did something happen?” Mom asked suddenly, voice high and sweet.

“Dad died,” Allison told her gently, “Remember?”

“Oh,” Mom’s pleasant smile fell along with her tone, “Yes, of course.”

Allison turned to Diego, the expert on all Mom-related matters, “Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” He confirmed, already soaked, “Yeah, she’s fine. She just needs to rest.” He looked over at Mom, concern playing in his eyes, “You know, recharge.”

Pogo approached, leaning on his cane with one hand and holding up a black umbrella in the other. The last of them to arrive in the courtyard—the last of the _nine_ people who even want to attend Dad’s funeral, even if it’s out of a barely-there lingering loyalty for most of them—Pogo’s arrival signalled the beginning of the service.

It’s even worse than Klaus had expected. Luther poured the ashes onto the ground, and without the wind they sit there in a sad grey pile. Pogo is the only one willing to give a speech, which is expected. His words are kind, yet honest, and it doesn’t exactly make Klaus want to vomit hearing Pogo talk about Dad in even a remotely positive light, but it’s close. To him, their Father is nothing short of a monster, inhumane in his apathy and ambition. Somewhere deep in his chest, he knows Ben thinks that way too.

“He leaves behind a complicated legacy—” Pogo attempted to continue, but Diego cuts him off with a deadpan, because out of all of them, it’s probably Number Two who believes it most of all.

“He was a monster.”

A harsh laugh bubbled out of Klaus’s throat before he could attempt to stop it. Ben looked at him in disappointment, “Really?” He said, eyebrow raised, “We’re at his _funeral_ .” It’s too quiet for Klaus to rebuttal under his breath that technically _Diego_ was the one to interrupt the speech in the first place, but Klaus supposed his bitter laugh is more inappropriate to the setting than Diego’s righteous anger, so he shrugged and let it be.

“He was a bad person and a worse father.” Diego said definitively, like it’s a fact, because it is. Like all five (six, really) of his siblings should agree with him unanimously, which they won’t. “The world’s better off without him.”

 _“Diego.”_ Allison started, because for all she certainly resented their Father, Klaus knows that even all these years later she and Luther will always be the ones to firmly defend him and all his wrongs. Or maybe it’s out of some weird respect for the dead that Klaus has never managed to understand; to him, ghosts have never been holy or sacred: just there and annoying, as much, if not more than the living.

“My _name_ is Number Two,” Diego’s voice, no matter how firm he tries to make it, wavered with emotion, “You know why? Because our _Father_ couldn’t be bothered to give us actual names. He had _Mom_ do it.”

“Would anyone like something to eat?” Mom chirped, at the mention of her name. Diego’s gaze flickered over to her and automatically softened in concern.

“No,” Vanya reassured her with a quiet smile, “It’s fine, Mom.”

“Oh,” Mom’s smile wavered slightly, “Okay.”

“Look, you wanna pay your respects? Go ahead.” Diego stepped forward, turning slightly so that he could face all of them, and gestured at the damp pile of Reginald’s ashes on the ground, “But at least be honest about the kind of man he was.”

Luther looked up, “You should stop talking now.” He told Diego, voice deep, and more of an order than a suggestion.

Diego pinned him with a stare and turned fully to face him, “You know, you of all people should be on my side here, _Number One.”_

“I am warning you.” Luther took a step forward.

“After everything he did to you?” Diego got up in Luther’s face, and Klaus, after years of watching his brothers pick fights with his each other found himself biting the nail of his thumb in apprehension, “He had to ship you a million miles away.”

“Diego,” Luther bared his teeth, “ _Stop. Talking.”_

“ _That’s_ how much he couldn’t stand the sight of _you_!” Diego pitched his voice a level above Luther’s, more a shout than anything, and punctuated his harsh words by violently jabbing Luther in the chest with two fingers.

“Uh oh.” Ben said.

Luther smacked Diego’s hand away with an aggressive grunt, and took two heavy swings at him that Diego deftly ducked and dodged around, always the more nimble of the two. The rest of the siblings backed up, Vanya pulled Mom by her sleeve, and Klaus automatically held an arm out in front of Five (only for Five to tug it down in annoyance), as they all watched their two brothers exchanged hard hitting blows and didn’t dare think of interfering. Klaus, personally, was rooting for Diego.

“Boys,” Pogo insisted, desperately, “Stop this at once!”

Neither one listened. Luther landed a hard _smack_ on Diego’s back with a shout, and Diego stumbled away with a smirk playing on his features barely fazed. “Come on, big boy!” Diego taunted him, gesturing for Luther to come forward and land a hit that would actually hurt. Luther aimed high and heavy, but Diego was too fast and ducked underneath the punch to jab Luther painfully in the gut, then followed it up with a series of pounding punches on Luther’s backside.

“Stop it!” Vanya called out.

“Hit him!” Klaus countered, just to be contrary, ignoring the nasty look Ben sent his way, “ _Hit him!”_

For all of his brute strength, Luther had spent the past four years on the moon while Diego had been running around the city as a vigilante. He ducked under all of Luther’s wide swings with ease, and countered with blows that left Luther groaning both frustration and pain. Pogo sighed in disappointment, and turned to leave.

Luther, at last realizing that his reckless punches would never land, grabbed Diego by the lapels of his leather jacket and used it to fling him hard into the ground towards the cement pedestal of Ben’s memorial statue. Diego rolled out of it and stood, ducked under Luther’s punch and kicked him sharply in the knee. It was almost comical how outclassed Luther, _Number One,_ was, and Klaus was unashamed in how much he reveled in it.

“He shouldn’t be losing this badly,” Ben pointed out thoughtfully, analyzing his brothers’ fight the same way he would characters in one of his books, “He can’t just be out of practice… I wonder if he hasn’t really fought someone since he bulked up.” At Klaus’s half-interested humm in agreement, he continued, “All his shots go wide and he’s putting the whole weight of his arm behind them, so he can’t aim. It’s practically child’s play for Diego to dodge.”

Of course that was when Diego _failed_ to dodge. After landing a hard kick to Luther’s stomach, Luther wrapped one large hand around his arm and refused to let go. Diego struggled to free his arm, kicked Luther in the knees, and through gritted teeth barked, _“Get. Off. Me.”_

Diego grabbed Luther’s hand, and when Luther went to pry him off Diego used his free hand to sock Luther hard in the jaw. The shock of it, not the pain—because Luther always _was_ annoying good at shrugging that off—allowed Diego to pry his arm free and land another punch before stumbling away, dazed from the struggle and panting heavily.

“We don’t have time for this.” Five dismissed them with a condescending roll of the eyes and went to head back indoors just as Diego let out another taunting shout.

“Come here, big boy!” Luther gave a guttural yell, grabbed Diego’s shoulder with one hand for balance and aimed a deadly punch with the other. Diego still slipped out of his hold with ease and ducked to the side, but Luther followed through, and his fist met metal.

Ben’s statue slid off the pedestal, and crashed to the ground with a sound like shattering glass, the bronzed head popping off and rolling to the side morbidly. Ben—the real one, the ghost one—made a face.

“And there goes Ben’s statue.” Allison sighed, giving up as she turned away from Luther and Diego to go back inside. Luther, still breathing heavily, marched towards Diego, who took a few steps back and reached inside his coat.

A step ahead of him, Vanya cried out in horror, “Diego, no!” just as a small, silver throwing knife flew threw the air and sliced through Luther’s jacket to leave a shining cut across his upper arm. Luther gaped in pain, while Diego merely adjusted his stance in expectancy for round two.

But the cut seemed to have knocked Luther out of his berserker mode and back into reality with the rest of them. He clasped one hand heavily against the cut, breathing heavy, and stomped past Klaus and Diego to the doors that led inside.

Vanya walked up to Diego, “You never know when to stop, do you?” She accused, as if Diego was the one to shatter Ben’s statue against the ground with one heavy hit.

Diego shook his head with a breathy laugh, walked a few steps closer until the only thing separating him and Vanya were the points of her umbrella and said, “You got enough material for your sequel, yet?”

Vanya shifted in place uncomfortably, “He was my father, too,” She defended, and then walked off after Luther. Diego stood in place for a moment, breathing slightly ragged, before he calmed himself and walked over to Mom, footsteps falling heavy. He reached out to her with a gentle hand, the same one that had thrown the knife a second ago, and tugged at her arm.

“Mom,” He caught her attention with a quiet voice, jerking his head to the building slightly as she turned to him with a dazed smile, “Let’s go inside.” He guided her passed Klaus, hand light on her back, and opened the door for her. “Come on, okay? Come on.”

Alone in the courtyard, Klaus walked past Dad’s ashes with barely a glance, to where Ben stood, rain falling through him, and staring blankly at his statue’s decapitated head. His hood was raised, tucked neatly over his hair and cast his face into a gloomy shadow.

“Hey,” Klaus placed a hand on his shoulder. Cold from death, but resoundingly solid nonetheless, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ben gave a jerky nod, “Yeah it’s fine, I…” He kicked slightly at the bronze head, foot turning ghostly blue as it phased through, “I hated that statue anyways.”

“Mm.” Klaus hummed in agreement, “Let’s go home. We can watch that movie you had me rent, yeah?” Ben nodded again, and the two of them turned away from the statue to leave the courtyard and Dad’s ashes behind.

“You were right,” He admitted, voice quiet as Klaus tugged at the handle to make the door swing open. When Klaus raised his eyebrows at him, Ben sighed, “Family reunions suck.”

…

Despite being the last to leave the Courtyard, Klaus and Ben were the first ones ready to leave. Five, Luther, and Allison didn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. Neither was Diego, from the way he sat solemnly on the couch after having fussed over Mom for nearly ten minutes after he brought her inside. Vanya, on the other hand, was in the process of calling a taxi on the land lind.

Which left Klaus to grab his messenger bag from Ben’s room— bursting at the seams with his brother's favorite books and only a few of Dad’s fancy knick-knacks in the side pockets—and toss it over one shoulder, before he walked past Vanya to tap Diego on the shoulder so he could harass his brother into giving him a lift home. 

He was only half way there—Diego has always been easy to annoy, but it took _effort_ to find that sweet spot where he was willing to do _anything_ to get Klaus to leave him alone, including giving him the ride home he desired instead of forcing him to take the bus like a plebeian without a personal taxi service of a brother.

Diego was irritably trying to wave him off—only half heartedly, though, Klaus noted smugly—when Luther snatched his bag off his shoulder and demanded, “I could have sworn I told you to put Dad’s stuff back, Klaus.”

“Mm?” Klaus turned to face Luther, “What? No. That’s not Dad’s shit.” And then, because Klaus just can’t help but change the subject, “Did you put a bandaid on Diego’s cut, yet?” He glanced around Luther’s bulk to see his brother’s uncovered wound and his outrageously long arm hair, “You should really get that covered, Luther. Fuck knows where Diego’s knives have been lately—”

“Klaus,” Luther cut him off, holding the straps of his bag with one large hand as he used the other to flip open the top, “I can’t stop you from using drugs, but I can’t let you pawn off Dad’s things to pay for them—” Luther caught a glance of what was actaully in the bag. Not silver bookends and weird gold gilded statues like he’d clearly expected, but instead an old collection of worn books and neatly packed action figures that were priceless to no one but Ben.

“Can I have that back now, please?” Klaus asked, rocking slightly on his heels, “Since, y’know. It isn’t  _Dad’s_ stuff.”

“Why do you have _Ben’s_ stuff,” Luther hesitantly touched a few of the action figures, before his gaze, suddenly horrified, shot back up to Klaus, “You were gonna pawn Ben’s old things.”

 _That_ caught everyone’s attention, since Luther had never learned the meaning of subtly or the fine art of whispering. Ben pinched his nose between two fingers with a sigh, as Klaus frantically waved his hands back and forth, “ _No_ , oh my god, is that what you _think_ of me?” Luther didn’t respond, “Why would I even steal Ben’s things to pawn when I could’ve just gone back to Dad’s office and picked back up all the stuff you made me put back earlier!”

“You stole some of Dad’s things earlier?” Vanya asked, eyes wide.

“I mean, _yeah_ , but it’s kind of a waste for all that expensive nonsense to just _sit_ there collecting dust when I can use it to pay for—”

“Drugs.” Allison concluded, nose wrinkled.

“ _No,”_ Klaus huffed and turned in her direction, “I was _going_ to say the next Immortal Album.” And then, “Y’know. The metal band.”

“Klaus.” Vanya said, voice annoying pitiful, like she could see through him and _knew_ that the money would be going towards his old drug habit. Christ, you write _one goddamn book_ exposing your family secrets and suddenly you think you can psychoanalyze everyone!

“Stop ganging up on me!” He demanded, and swung back to Luther, to reach out and snatch the dangling bag, “Just gimme my bag back!”

“No.” Luther held the bag out of his reach, and pushed him back with one hand on his chest, “Klaus, I can’t let you—”

“Give me back the bag!” He shouted, fists clenching at his side, “Even if I _wanted_ to pawn Ben’s crap—which I _fucking don’t_ —I’d have more of a right to it then anyone else fucking here!”

“Don’t call my stuff crap,” Ben told him, altogether too calm for someone who’s favorite brother (because honestly, who else would it be after all these years?) was being accused of trying to _pawn off his things for drug money_. He also, Klaus absently noticed, was hanging by Luther’s side now, just by where their brother was holding Klaus’s bag by the ratty straps. Ben’s eyes flickered towards the bag as he spoke.

 _“Shut up._ You’re not helping!” Klaus hissed under his breath, but considering how silent the room had gone in the wake of his admittedly hysterical declaration, his words carried more than they should have.

“Klaus,” Vanya stepped closer, concern annoying evident on her face, “Who are you talking too?”

“None of your business!” He snapped through gritted teeth, “Now just gimme the bag back, Luther!”

“No.” Luther stepped back to further the distance between them. He face was set in that firm leader expression of his, “I’m not letting you—”

“You’re not in charge of me!” Klaus screamed, and failed to notice the increasingly concerned expression on Ben’s face, “Dad’s _dead_ , Luther, you don’t _have_ any power over me anymore! And you _haven’t_ since you got Ben _killed_ when we were eighteen so either give me his stuff back before I _fucking_ make you!”

Luther lowered his arm with the bag, concerned, but angry with teeth gritted, “Come  _on_ , Klaus.”

“You have three seconds.” Klaus told him, voice quiet and hands shaking, but held up three fingers to Luther nonetheless.  He jerked his head in Ben’s direction, which, to the rest of his silent siblings, probably looked like a nervous tic or further proof of what appeared to a drug related mental breakdown. Instead of, y’know, a _I’m-so-sick-of-my-goddamn-family-and-just-want-to-go-home-and-drown-my-sorrows-in-frozen-waffles_ breakdown. Ben looked somewhat apprehensious, considering the fact that Klaus was _sort of_ in the middle of having a mini-meltdown in the aftermath of Dad’s funeral, but moved closer to where the bag hung by Luther’s side and poised his hands so he could snatch it anyways. God, Klaus loved nonverbal communication sometimes. He was also  _definitely_ going to buy Ben that book he wanted and tickets to that movie he kept suggesting they go see; Ben was the _best_.

“One.” Klaus placed one finger down, hand shaking along with his voice.

“Klaus,” Allison said, voice _annoyingly_ soft and comforting, “Come on, let’s just talk about this—”

“Two.” He ignored her, placed down the second finger and pretended not to feel the way his nails dug painfully into his palm.

“Klaus,” Diego finally spoke up, “As much as I’d love to see you fight Luther, do you _really_ think that’s a good idea?” Klaus didn’t think it was a good idea at all, actually, but he refused to respond. After all, _he_ wouldn’t be the one to fight Luther if things came to blows.

“Three.” He placed his final finger down with a firm finality, which left him with a clenched fist shaking midair. Luther wore a bizarre mix of anger, confusion, and pity on his face, but by the way he still determinedly held the bag by his side and tensed as if expecting Klaus to throw himself at him (because, well, it kind of _was_ his signature move), it was clear he wouldn’t budge.

“Fine,” Klaus said, as he clenched his fist tighter and felt the cool power condense in his palms, “Then I guess we’ll be taking it by force.”

Confusion etched itself into Luther’s brow, “ _We?_ ”

Klaus didn’t respond, and instead let the blue glow wash over his fist until his face was tinged so brightly by the color that his siblings immediately all tensed, “Fine.” Klaus repeated, and ignored the way Luther’s eyes widened at the show of power that Klaus _definitely_ hadn’t had ten years ago, “Ben!” He snapped.

Ben appeared by Luther’s side, seemingly transparent, but tinged in the same bright blue of Klaus’s power. In one swift move, Ben snatched the bag out of Luther’s suddenly lax grip, flipped the top over, and tossed it to Klaus, who snatched it out the air smoothly in a particularly badass move, and slung it across his chest. 

The blue faded from his fists and from Ben. All of his siblings were frozen around the room, eyes wide and jaws loose in the same identical expression of shock and bewilderment, as if they weren’t quite sure what they had witnessed but knew the implications of what had happened in that short moment nonetheless.

“Right,” Klaus said, voice wavering from adrenaline now, instead of anger. He turned swiftly on his heels, and made a beeline past Vanya to the large double doors, as Ben trailed quietly after him. “This was _fun,_ ” His voice was strained as he tugged on the door handle, “I’ll see you guys later.”

The door slammed behind him with an echoing finality, more intense then it had been when he stormed out of Dad’s office after his encounter with Luther mere hours earlier. He let out a shaky breath, ignored the concerned looks Ben shot him, and stepped out from under the awning and into the rain.

Inside, it was silent. Until finally, Diego broke it as he screwed up his features, stood up from his chair and looked at them all with _bafflement_ of all things before saying, “What the _fuck_ was that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a genuine monster of a first chapter, god. I'm kinda praying the other chapters aren't this long because it's probably gonna be between 5-10 chapters but by the way this one went... well, this fic'll probably be long.
> 
> Also, just a heads up! If you didn't read the tags there's no Klaus/Dave romance here, partially because I suck at writing romance, and partially because I want to focus on Ben and Klaus's relationship instead so there's some nice canon divergence that prevents Klaus and Dave from getting that close in the first place. Don't worry though, Dave's storyline will still be plenty painful. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you liked the chapter! Feel free to shoot me a comment here or message me on my tumbr @dragonsarecats to tell me what you think, or just to talk about Ben and Klaus because if it wasn't obvious already I'm a sucker for their characters, ha.
> 
> I'm gonna try and update somewhat regularly, maybe twice a month based on my writing speed, but despite my track record I have every intention of finishing the baby! Hope you all like it! :)
> 
> Title is from Vampire Money by MCR (they have so many lyrics that fit this show, my god was it hard to choose) and chapter title from The End


	2. and all the things that you never ever told me, and all the smiles that are never ever…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego's POV

Growing up with Klaus meant that Diego was used to a lot of things. 

Normal sibling things, like Klaus chattering his ear off for days on end, or harassing him constantly for a ride. Other, less normal, things, too, that just came with the territory of being part of Reginald Hargreeves’s homegrown superhero team. Things like Klaus turning every light on when he went into a room, and staring into space with a muted horror at something nobody else could see. Things like developing a drug problem at thirteen, and spiralling so heavily after Ben’s death five years later that he missed their brother’s funeral because he was in the hospital after overdosing for the first time (but not the last). By the time the Umbrella Academy had all gone their separate ways ten years ago, Diego was almost certain that there was nothing his brother could do that could truly surprise him, must less shake him so deeply to the core.

Klaus  _ had _ always loved proving people wrong. But Diego thought this was kind of overkill.

_ This _ , of course being Klaus conjuring Ben’s ghost into the  _ physical world _ during a fight with Luther to snatch his shit back and then storming out dramatically. 

“What the  _ fuck _ was that?” Diego repeated, eyes scanning the room to see if at least  _ on _ e of his shell shocked siblings had an answer. 

“That—was that—” Luther sputtered, his gaze flickered between his empty hand and the door, before he looked up, eyes saucer wide, “ _ Ben.” _

“Yeah,  _ no shit _ , Luther!” Diego shot back viciously, “I  _ meant _ the fucking light show Klaus put on after you accused him of trying to pawn Ben’s shit off for drug money, when  _ apparently _ his ghost was there the  _ whole fucking time!” _

“I didn’t know, Diego!” Luther insisted, horror lacing his words, “It’s  _ Klaus, _ ” He said, with the particular inflection on their brother’s name that set Diego’s teeth on edge, “What was I  _ supposed _ to think?” 

“Well, if you  _ were _ actually thinking during all of that,” Diego scoffed, “You might’ve remembered that Klaus hasn’t fucking been in the mansion since Ben  _ died. And _ —” He continued, as realization flickered over Luther’s face, “—that maybe he wanted something to remember his brother by,  _ even if _ , he could see Ben’s ghost.” 

“I—” Luther floundered, gesturing emptily with his hands like he was trying to apologize but just couldn’t find the right words. (Or didn’t know how). 

“—just assumed the worst of Klaus,” Diego finished for him, with a scowl, “Like always.”

Before Luther could pull himself together to call Diego a hypocrite—and rightfully so, because by the time he was fifteen he had always assumed the worst of Klaus, because it generally rang true; all of their siblings had, except for Ben, who’d always pulled their wayward brother back from the brink with just a hand on his arm and a seemingly unshakeable faith in Klaus that had kept the two of them attached at the hip through all Ben’s life, and now, apparently, his death—there was the sharp  _ clack _ of a cane against the marble. 

“ _ Boys, _ ” Pogo admonished sharply, “I will  _ not  _ have a repeat of the fight that occurred in the courtyard. Or need I remind you about the current state of your brother’s statue?” Luther flinched violently at the reminder, and Diego ignored the way his own shoulders turned stiff.

“Did you know, Pogo?” Diego tilted his head to the side. He doesn’t elaborate, because he doesn’t need to. Pogo knew what he meant. 

“You will have to be more specific, Master Diego,” Pogo said carefully, shifting his cane between his hands. “I am not quite sure what you mean.”

“About Klaus.” Luther elaborated, words stiff and stilted, “His power. Powers.” 

“You will have to be more specific, Master Luther,” Pogo repeated wearily, and then, “Although I was not aware of your brother’s capabilities to conjure ghosts into the physical world—”

“Not just  _ a _ ghost, though,” Vanya said, looking up to meet Pogo’s eyes while she worried the hem of her shirt between her fingers, “ _ Ben’s _ ghost.” 

“Neither your Father nor I were aware he could conjure Master Ben into this plane of reality, no,” Pogo reassured her, “However… he  _ was _ aware that Master Klaus had been able to see your brother’s ghost for quite some time, now.”

“How long?” Allison leaned forward in her seat. Her voice had an edge to it. 

“To be frank, Mistress Allison, I believe Master Klaus has been consistently…  _ haunted,  _ if you will, by Master Ben since his untimely death.” Pogo told her, and leaned both hands on his cane for support. 

Ten years, then. Diego’s jaw clenched. “Why didn’t  _ we _ know?” He ground out.

“Your Father never saw reason to tell you,” Pogo sighed, “And as for Master Klaus, I am sure he had his own reasons, as well.” 

“Ben was our brother too…” Vanya said quietly, reminiscent of the way she’d confronted him earlier outside, “He should have said  _ something _ . We had a right to know.” 

“How did he even do that?” Luther asked Pogo, clearly still bewildered at the odd show of power on their brother’s end, “I always thought the most he could do was see and summon them.”

“Yes, well,” Pogo rubbed his chin, “That may have been all Master Klaus manifested when he was young, but your Father  _ was _ always convinced that the drug habits he picked up in puberty were stunting his potential.” 

“So he’s sober now, right?” Diego crossed his arms, “That’s why he could do the whole conjuring thing with Ben.” 

“Earlier, in Dad’s office,” Allison spoke up, voice soft and contemplative, “I asked him if he was just out of rehab since he seemed more present, less…” She teetered her hand midair, “Lost in the clouds. Like he hadn’t been high recently. Klaus said he’d been done with the drugs stuff for a while, but I,” She hesitated, “I didn’t believe him.” 

“ _ Really?” _ Five scoffed, speaking for the first time during the entire ordeal, his head popping up from behind the bar for a moment to flash Allison a familiar judgemental look, “It was obvious. He pupils weren’t dilated, his hands didn’t shake, and he kept shooting the empty space next to him  _ looks _ while I made my sandwich.” He shrugged, “He was practically waving a flag with  _ SOBER _ written over it in all capital letters.” 

“Master Five is right,” Pogo confirmed, before Allison could do more then shoot Five an offended glare, “Your Father had strived to keep track of all of you over the years as much as he could to ensure your well being. According to your Father’s records, I believe Master Klaus has been sober for a little over a year now.” Diego did his best to push down the anger at the fact that Dad had  _ still _ been trying to hold some modicum of control over all of them by  _ monitoring their lives _ , to the second, more important part of the statement. 

“More… than a year,” He said, doubt upturning his words, because for all he loved his chatterbox of a brother, the idea of Klaus, who’d spend more of his life a junkie than not, suddenly committing to sobriety out of seemingly nowhere, was, well,  _ strange _ . “What changed?”

“We were never quite exactly sure what changed up here,” Pogo shifted his cane and lifted one long finger to tap twice against his temples, “However based off of Master Klaus’s medical records it appears he decided to simply continue his forced sobriety after his last stint in the hospital.”

“I remember the call,” Vanya pressed a hand against her mouth, as horror shined in her eyes, “I… They’d told me that Klaus was in a coma. I couldn’t visit because of a—a—a publishing conflict.”

That’s right, Diego remembered, because he had gotten the call too, only he hadn’t listened beyond the cursory  _ your brother, Klaus Hargreeves, has overdosed  _ before he hung up, but Vanya had published her shitty book just a few days beforehand. And while Klaus probably hadn’t even read the damn book until he was getting clean, Diego knows enough about Vanya and her general sibling complex (because, like it or not, they  _ all _ fucking have one) to recognize the guilt practically dripping off of her.

“I tried to visit, later, but…” She rubbed her arm anxiously, remorse soaking her shaky words, and Diego took a moment to be fucking  _ pissed _ that the only member of their shitty ass family who attempted to visit their comatose brother was the one who’d written an autobiography betraying them all by dumping their secrets to the world. “He’d already been discharged.” 

“You are correct, Mistress Vanya,” Pogo nodded, “At the time Master Klaus had had a severe overdosage that left him comatose for nearly six days. By the time he had woken up, all poisonous material had been flushed out of his system, so to speak. Your Father and I were unaware of what occurred once he discharged himself, however I believe it must have been something relatively substantial to keep Master Klaus from returning to his unsavory methods of keeping his powers at bay.”

“Dwelling on  _ why _ he’s sober is stupid,” Five declared, “The real question is what he can do now that he is. Clearly he’s accomplished the ability to summon ghost to the physical plane, but that and his sobriety comes with the implication that Klaus has learned to  _ control _ the ghosts. When we were all children,” And fucking hell, despite looking like a preteen  _ mess _ , Five still managed to sound like the old man he was, “Klaus was terrified of the ghosts, and his inability to control them led to the whole junkie thing. If he’s dropped  _ that _ schtick, then there’s really only a few options.”

“You know, if you keep up that cold clinical tone,” Diego told him, as he flipped one of his smaller throwing knives between his fingers, “You’re gonna end up like Dad.”

“Shut up, junior,” Five scoffed, “I’m thirty years older than everyone, I’ve  _ already _ grown up. Unlike some of you.”

“Just keep telling yourself that.” Diego scoffed. 

“Is everyone alright? I heard shouting.” Mom appeared at the end of the stairs, looking over all of them with concern in her eyes and one hand resting on the banister. She had the same dazed air as earlier, but she appeared more reality grounded even after less than half an hour of recharge. “Oh dear, where did Klaus go? Was there a fight?”

“He had an argument with Luther,” Allison told her, “And then stormed out.” Oh, Diego just  _ loved _ how she phrased it to make Klaus the immature one. Which, well, he  _ was _ but he also  _ wasn’t _ the one who smashed Ben’s memorial statue into pieces earlier that evening and accused someone of trying to pawn of Ben’s worn books and figurines not even an hour later. 

“Oh dear,” Mom raised a hand to her mouth, forehead wrinkling, “You shouldn’t fight with your brother, Luther.” For a glorious moment, Luther looked both properly admonished and cowed, “But if he’s already left, then there’s little to be done. The two of you will have to sort things out tomorrow.” Mom nodded decisively, and clasped her hands in front of her dress in a way Diego knew meant that there was no arguing with her. 

“Mom, what are you talking about?” Allison asked, forehead creased. 

“My goodness,” Mom pressed a delicate hand to her chest as her smile turned awkward, yet losing none of the warmth, “I forgot to tell you all, I’m sorry.” Her smile shifted again to bashful and sincere, “It’s been so long since all seven of you were home. I thought it would be nice if we all had lunch together tomorrow before you all had to leave. I told Klaus and Ben earlier, so no need to worry about them.”

“Klaus,” Luther said, and paused for a beat, “And Ben.” 

“Yes,” Mom nodded, “Earlier, when I was helping Klaus pack Ben’s things. He was going to bring most of it home tomorrow after lunch. Diego, darling,” She turned to him, smile brilliant and completely unaware to the massive bomb she’d just dropped into the room. “Would you mind giving Klaus a ride home tomorrow? I don’t want him to hurt himself carrying all those boxes…Even after all these years he’s still so skinny…” Mom shook her head with a sigh, her dazed eyes focused on some invisible point across the room. Just as Diego was about to suggest she go back to her charging port, Mom jolted out of it and looked over them all with a plastic sort of smile, “Would anyone like something to eat?”

“We’ve eaten,” Diego spoke before anyone else could, then rose and went over to met Mom at the banister, “Hey, let’s go upstairs, okay?”

“Of course, Diego,” Mom smiled absently, and Diego placed one hand gently on her shoulder to guide her back up the stairs, and away from the stifling silence of the living room. It felt like forever before they reached the top of the stairs, Mom lagging and Diego stewing in his own thoughts. He guided her towards her charging station and helping her sit down. She smiled at him again, soft and small but enough to cause warmth to blossom in his chest, “Thank you, darling.”

“No problem, Mom,” He tried to match her smile, hands gripping hers. A question spinned in his mind, heavy and hard, but he shoved it down and replaced it with a lighter one. One she might actually be able to answer, “Do you know where Klaus—Klaus and—” He stumbled over the word for a moment, trailed slightly at a sudden thought, and then finished, “Klaus and Ben live?” 

“Of course I do, silly,” Mom released one of her hands out of Diego’s hold and reached out to poke him playfully on the nose. She missed, slightly, and instead hit the edge of his cheek just next to it. “What kind of Mother would I be, if I didn’t?”

“Could you tell me?” 

“It would be my pleasure.” Mom broke out into a beam, the one she had always worn when she caught Diego and his siblings getting on well, and rattled off the address, “Klaus is probably still upset about his argument with Luther, so take a box of Ben’s things,” She advised him as he stood, in a slight moment of coherency, “He always was such as sensitive boy…” 

Diego gave her a small smile, “I’ll remind him about lunch too.” Mom smiled at that, staring blankly at him with a dazed look in her eyes, “‘Night, Mom.”

She didn’t respond immediately, and it was only when he was a dozen footsteps away, hand already reaching for the knob of Ben’s door, she absently said, “Good night, Diego,” 

…

Diego Hargreeves doesn’t  _ do _ second thoughts. He doesn’t do doubts either. Or uncertainty, indecision, hesitation. He just doesn't do it. 

He doesn’t do it when he picked up a box from Ben’s room (heavy, because even as a ghost Ben’s still a nerd who loves his books), he doesn’t do it when he passed the stifling silence of the living room on his way out (awkward, because while Five and Vanya have ditched—the former probably still on his hunt for caffeine and the latter because her taxi arrived—Luther and Allison definitely have  _ not _ and proceed to stare at him as he walked by with Ben’s things), and he doesn’t do it on the twenty minute drive to Klaus’s apartment (tedious, because Klaus lives in a poorer district of the city while Dad literally owned the block they lived on). 

Diego doesn’t do second thoughts or doubts, or indecision; but if he did, it would be good explanation for why he’s spent the past ten minutes staring at the worn wood of Klaus’s apartment door instead of knocking. 

(Diego Hargreeves doesn’t do nerves either, in case you were wondering.) 

Finally, Diego gritted his teeth and sucked it up; mystical glow-y hands and new powers or  _ not _ , Klaus was his  _ brother _ . His lame brother who’s never known when to shut up, and spent their entire childhood making stupid sandwiches out of peanut butter and whatever he could find in the cupboards. Even if he  _ did _ have nerves (and he doesn’t, because Diego doesn’t  _ do _ them, okay?) they would be stupid and pointless because it’s  _ Klaus _ .

He adjusted his grip on the box of Ben’s books, raised one hand to the door, and knocked sharply twice. The noise was sharp, and Diego cringed a little inside at the way it echoed throughout the hall, and immediately regretted knocking in the first place. (Because Diego, shockingly enough,  _ does _ do regrets.)

He shifted his arm back underneath the box and rolled his shoulders. Behind the door he heard a TV be cut off, the aggressive sound of a plate being dropped onto a table, and an annoyed groan that  _ definitely _ came from Klaus before his brother ambled over to the door and pulled it open. 

“Diego?” Klaus squinted at his face, at the box in his hands, and then back to his face again, “How do you know where I live?”

“Mom,” He said simply, and lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug, “I have—” He jostled the box slightly, and obligingly handed it over when Klaus made grabby hands. Diego didn’t even try to hide his snort when Klaus immediately sagged under the weight. 

“Shut up,” Klaus told him pointedly, and then, “Did you just bring the  _ one _ box? There’s like three more.”

“Yeah I saw,” Diego told him with a scowl, “But I need  _ some _ collateral to make sure you come to lunch tomorrow.” Klaus made a face, and Diego crossed his arms, “Mom’s excited.” He said firmly, with a very strong  _ I will stab you if you ditch and make her sad  _ undertone, even though he didn’t really want to go himself. 

Klaus made another face, “No—It’s just Diego.” He called back in the apartment, and Diego’s brain suddenly thrummed  _ Ben _ , “Yeah, he brought a box of your stuff.” Another pause, “No, just the one. Yeah, that’s what  _ I  _ said!” 

“Uh…” 

“What? Why do I have to— _ ugh _ ,  _ fine. _ ” Klaus hip checked the door hard, opening it the rest of the way, “Ben says to invite you in,” Klaus informed him definitively. The  _ so I have to _ went unsaid. “Do  _ you _ want to come in?” 

Klaus wanted him to say no. Fair enough.  _ Diego _ wanted himself to say no. 

“Sure…” He agreed hesitantly. Fuck. 

Klaus sighed, placed the box on the ground by the door as gently as a person with twig arms could, and flapped his hands violently at Diego until he got the message and stepped over the threshold. 

And then Diego actually looked around. It was… honestly nicer than he’d expected. 

The whole room glowed, literally. Klaus had half a dozen lamps scattered across the room; two short ones with bright pink lamp shades on the kitchen counter, two on opposite ends of a coffee table placed between a second-hand television and two ridiculously plush chairs, and a tall one on either side of the front door. Fairy Lights were also hooked along the wall, over the curtains, and draped across a bookshelf littered with second hand copies of Ben’s favorite novels. 

The apartment was small and cramped and shitty; but it was also warm and comfortable and bright in a way that was just shy of obnoxious. It’s a fitting place for Klaus to call home, Diego mused. 

“Nice lights,” Diego commented, “You must have a killer electric bill.”

“Ugh,” Klaus groaned, and kicked the door shut, “Don’t remind me, man.” He turned to Diego, “So, uh… Do you want something to eat? That’s what you offer when people are over right?” He glanced over at the plush chairs for confirmation and then nodded decisively, “Want a sandwich? I’d offer you some frozen waffles but Ben says that ‘poor etiquette’ or whatever.” 

Diego snorted, “I’d take a frozen waffle over your gross sandwiches anyday.”

“No wonder Ben wanted to invite you in,” Klaus grumbled, “You’re both teaming up on me, and you can’t even  _ see _ him.”

“Could I?” Diego asked, only half thinking before he responded. 

Klaus paused for one long, painful second. If Diego were the kind of person to have second thoughts he’d probably be having them. But the second ended, and Klaus turned away from him to go retrieve the plate of waffles he’d abandoned on his coffee table at Diego’s knock.

When he finally spoke he said, “Maybe tomorrow.” Klaus’s eyes flickered over to the plush chair again, “I promised Mom I’d let her see him at lunch.”

“Is it tiring?” Diego asked, although he doesn’t really know why. That’s a lie, actually, he does. Because of the many things Diego Hargreeves does  _ not _ do denial is one of them. Even if none of his siblings would ever admit it, he’s the most functional one of them for a  _ reason _ , damnit, and it isn’t because he’d spent the past ten years lying to himself about how much Dad fucked them all over. 

It’s probably why he’d never been particularly close to most of them. Diego had always been ruthlessly honest, even as a kid when the truth was stuck between his teeth and the stutter of every other word. As soon as he’d realized what kind of a man Dad was—a horrible, vicious, manipulative one—there had been no turning back for him, no hiding behind pretty lies and a desperate  _ ache _ for approval when the truth was standing stark in front of him. 

Somehow Klaus had seen it too, and, just like he did with everything, his brother dragged Ben along with him into his new worldview and suddenly it was the even siblings against the odd, although Diego remember fondly, the other four hadn’t quite known. 

What was it Klaus had called them? Something stupid and dumb that had made Ben almost snort milk out of his nose in sheer incredulity of how  _ bad  _ it was—The Oddities. It had sounded like the name of a shitty indie rock band, even back then, but Klaus had been gleeful at his creation. 

_ (“Shut up, it fits! ‘Cause like, they’re the odd numbers right? But they like, actually  _ like _ Dad better than Mom even though she’s like, way cooler, and it’s like, literally odd, y’know? So, Oddities.”  _

God Diego had forgotten how often Klaus had used the work  _ like _ when they were kids. Thank  _ fuck _ his brother had dropped that verbal tic once they were teenagers.) 

So, yeah. Diego knew why he’d asked a question that he wouldn’t ever need the answer to, wouldn’t even consider asking really, unless out of curiosity for his brother’s powers (which he’d never particularly had) or out of care.

Diego Hargreeves doesn’t  _ do _ denial, and has never done it, so he knows his favorite childhood memories are still those stolen afternoons in the kitchen while Mom had baked batches of chocolate chip cookies, as he had played cards across the table with Klaus, who had kept trying to cheat only to be caught by Ben, sat at the end between the two of them and nose never once lifted out of his book.

Diego had never been particularly close with any of his siblings after Five had disappeared. But once upon a time, when they were children, he had been close with Klaus and Ben. 

Klaus teetered his hand back in forth, “Ehh,” He said, face scrunched up, “Kinda, yeah. I wouldn’t, like, faint or anything if I—” Klaus wiggled his fingers vaguely, “—for you, but.” Klaus paused, frustration etched into his features, “God, sorry, Ben explains it so much better. It’s kind of like... “ Klaus titled his head to the side and screwed his face up, “It’s kind of like exercise, I guess? I manifest Ben regularly, right, but if I overextend myself one day it’s like pulling a muscle?” Klaus’s voice upticked into a question at the end, and he glanced back over at the chair, and nodded once decisively, “Yeah, it’s like pulling a muscle. I’d have to rest it for a few days, until it heals. Or well,” Klaus scratched his cheek, “until the energy builds up. This is kind of getting away from me, y’know?”

“Yeah, it is,” Diego agreed, while amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth, “You could have just said you have shitty stamina and been done with it.”

“My stamina is  _ fantastic _ !” Klaus protested, and forcefully sat down on the arm of a plush chair, plate of waffles squarely in his lap. “I’ve never had  _ any _ complaints—”

“You’re disgusting,” Diego informed him lazily, “When we were eleven it was eating earthworms and twenty years later you’ve upgraded to telling me about your sexlife without  _ any _ prompting.”

“Are you implying you’d prompt me to?” Klaus asked gleefully, as he sliced off a piece of his waffle and popped it into his mouth. He barely took a moment to chew before he jabbed his fork in Diego’s direction, “And I earned good money off of those earthworms for your information!”

“Yeah, I  _ know _ .” Diego drawled, “You ate a dozen of them without batting an eye and the next thing I knew me and Ben were each out sixty bucks.” Klaus snorted, and cut another piece from his waffle. 

“Chewed ‘em too,” Klaus said airily, “I wasn’t about to let you cheat me by claiming that swallowing them whole didn’t count. That’s what Ben did with the pillbugs and the bastard didn’t tell me until I had eaten seven of them.” Diego shook his head with a loose laugh, and Klaus met his smile with a beam, “Speaking of, Ben says you should sit down, stop standing around all awkward.” He jerked his head towards the free chair, “Ben’s hogging this one so it’s not like you’ll phase through him. You were always worried about dumb shit like that.”

“Shut up,” Diego dismissed, and sat down regardless, “Like you have room to talk when you surrendered that chair to Ben.” 

“I’m not scared of phasing through a  _ ghost _ , Diego,” Klaus huffed indignantly, waving his fork around, “I’m scared of phasing through  _ Ben _ . Death has made him vicious, y’know?”

Before Diego could so much as crack a smile, Klaus went tumbling to the floor with a yelp. His waffle and plate went flying in one direction and his fork in other. Klaus ended up in a heap on the ground, his limbs askew, bafflement etched into his features. 

“Ben  _ pushed _ me.” Klaus whined, and that was all it took to get Diego to burst into a fit of snickering laughter. Betrayal flashed in his brother’s eyes, and Klaus couldn’t seem to choose who to direct it to, Diego, or the ghost of their other brother in the chair, and it only served to make Diego laugh harder. 

A sudden wave of nostalgia crept up in his chest. It was just like old times, wasn’t it? The best of them, when Father was too busy with Luther and Diego was too busy with his brothers to care about the favoritism. It was just like old times, with Klaus letting his mouth run, and Diego laughing his ass off whenever it backfired, and Ben snickering into his hand as  _ I told you so’s _ spilled from his mouth as easy as laughter did from Diego’s.

It was just like old times, really. 

Only it wasn’t. Because Ben had died gruesomely on a mission when they were  _ eighteen _ , and everything had fallen apart. The Umbrella Academy, their family, and Klaus. And Diego hadn’t done anything about it because by that point Klaus had already been spiralling for years, and unlike Ben, after a certain point Diego hadn’t wanted to stick around and watch as their brother drove himself into the ground. 

Ben had died, Klaus had overdosed, and Diego hadn’t done anything because the last time he’d been close to his brother was when they were fifteen and Diego caught him doing lines of cocaine in his bedroom at half-past four on a Thursday. 

Ben had died, Klaus had overdosed, and Diego looked the other way because he had looked at the death of one brother and thought it two. Thought that without Ben alive it would only be a matter of months before Klaus was dead and buried and Diego didn’t want to be close enough when Klaus self-destructed that he would be caught in the blast. 

But then months turned to years, turned into a decade, and suddenly the next funeral Diego was at was for his  _ Father _ instead of his brother and Klaus was standing there with the rest of them irritating and annoying but  _ alive _ , and Diego hadn’t been able to work out how he managed it. 

And then there was the fight with Luther, blue power pulsating from Klaus’s fists, and Ben,  _ Ben _ , was standing in the room with them for a precious moment before Klaus had stormed out, taking their brother with him. 

_ Sober _ . Pogo had said,  _ For over a year.  _

And Diego hadn’t known. Couldn’t have known, really, because he’d never asked in the first place. Hadn’t cared enough to, because he’s spent almost two decades trying to forget how much he loved the brother that made disgusting sandwiches and ate dozens of bugs on a bet so that it wouldn’t hurt as much when he tripped into an early grave the same way he had tripped down the stairs in Mom’s heels and broken his jaw when they were thirteen. 

He hadn’t cared, hadn’t  _ wanted _ to, and now that same brother is back, and clean, and by his side the other brother Diego had thought forever lost. And he probably would have known if he’d cared enough to ask.

Fuck. 

His smile suddenly felt as if it had been pasted on, fake and stretching his cheeks uncomfortably like the one Mom had worn earlier. The laughter in his chest halts abruptly and Diego found himself staring at the way Klaus picked himself off the ground, brushed his pants off aggressively in Ben’s direction, and sat right back on the arm of the chair he’d been pushed off just moments ago. The words slip out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“What happened, Klaus?” 

Klaus blinked, and then spoke slowly, as if Diego was a dumbass, “Ben pushed me off the chair.”

Diego scowled, “Not that. I mean—I mean—” He stumbled over his words,  _ again _ , but Klaus didn’t seem to mind, irritatingly enough. He just sort of stared blankly at Diego, while he stuttered over the question for a few seconds, “I—what happened?” He repeated, violently jerking a hand to gesture at the whole apartment, “Pogo said you got sober a year ago. Why?”

Not how, because Klaus is a stubborn mother fucker who probably would have gotten sober whenever he wanted out of pure  _ will _ . But he  _ hadn’t _ , and there was a  _ reason _ for that. So there must’ve been a reason for him to suddenly spin on his head and decide that being sober was suddenly worth the constant influx of screaming ghosts. 

“What?” Klaus blinked, once, twice, glanced down at the plush chair and then back to Diego, “How the hell does Pogo know that?”

“Dad’s a control freak who kept tabs on all of us,” Diego told him dryly, but knew better than to take the bait, “Don’t avoid the question, Klaus. What changed?”

“I…” Klaus glanced down at the plush chair again, at Ben, up at Diego and back to Ben again. He scratched at the back of his neck, “Well. I OD’d really hard. Like,  _ really  _ hard. Like  _ coma _ level hard. Like—” Klaus cut himself off, “I was in the hospital for a week. Long enough to get clean. Not just sober,” He corrected, “But  _ clean _ . There was nothing in my system when I woke up, and it  _ sucked. _ ” Diego snorted, but Klaus waved him off, “Not like that. Well, kind of like that. But, I was  _ sober _ in a  _ hospital. _ ”

The implications sunk in, “Ah,” Diego said, “Yeah.”

“ _ Yeah.” _ Klaus echoed, “So, obviously I checked myself out ASAP and went to find some drugs. So I bought some pills, popped ‘em, and just before I could swallow and get that  _ sweet _ ,  _ sweet  _ relief—oh my  _ god _ Ben, don’t look at me like that,  _ I’m kidding _ —Benji over here just—” Klaus punched the air, “Straight up Patrick Swayze’d me.”

“So that…”

“Yeah,” Klaus nodded twice, “That’s how we figured it out. And from there, well.” Klaus laughed, “Ben’s been trying to get me sober for years, so once I was finally willing to try he helped me figure out how to deal with my whole—” Klaus wiggled his fingers with a sly smile, “—ghost problem. Apparently this guy,” Klaus jabbed his thumb in Ben’s direction, “has spent like a decade coming up with conspiracy theories about my shitty powers, so I spent four months in rehab until I managed to set up my spam filter.”

“Spam filter?” Diego’s mouth upticked. Klaus was a moment away from replying, most likely with something snarky, and most  _ definitely _ something halfway stupid, when the police radio shoved into the pocket of his coat crackled to life.

_ “Gunshots reported on the 400 block of Milton Avenue, Griddy’s Doughnuts.” _ Muffled against fabric, but clear to Diego nonetheless. 

Diego Hargreeves doesn’t do uncertainty, indecision, or hesitation. He’s not uncertain when he pulled the radio out of his pocket and stared at it for a moment in what most certainly was  _ not _ indecision. He doesn’t look up at his brother hesitantly either, with a flinch in his shoulders, because Diego has to  _ go _ , but—

“Duty calls, right?” Klaus intoned, in that same annoyingly breathy voice with that same annoyingly light smile, head tilted to the side with just the slightest hint of mockery, “Breaking bones and cracking skulls.” Klaus laughed, “Saving lives, baby.”

“Yeah,” Diego nodded, and stood up, “Sorry, I…” 

Klaus waved him off, “Nah, nah, go do your thing, man.” Klaus made shooing motions until Diego had one hand on the door knob. “I’ll see you tomorrow right?” 

“Right.” Diego confirmed, and pulled the door open, “Bye.” 

It was fine. They were fine, his  _ brothers _ were fine—as much as a ghost and a recovering junkie could be, really—and Diego could investigate the shooting. He would see Klaus tomorrow. He would see  _ Ben _ tomorrow. They would force Diego to bring Ben’s boxes home the same way they forced him to give them rides when they were teenagers.

It was fine,  _ really _ , it was. 

Diego Hargreeves doesn’t do, and has never  _ done _ denial. He doesn’t do nerves, either, but growing up with a mess of reckless idiot siblings means that Diego  _ does _ do anxiety, sometimes, even just a bit. 

It’ll be fine. He knows it will be.

After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

…

 

Eudora arrested him. 

She’d snapped the cuffs around his wrists, shoved him into the back of a police car, and locked him in a cell until she was halfway done with her morning paperwork the next day. Diego really shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d been threatening him with it for years, even back when they were dating, and before that when the two of them were still in the police academy and he would steal steaming hot cups of coffee right out of her hands.  

But just because he could see it coming didn’t mean being arrested and kept overnight didn’t  _ monumentally _ piss him off. Mom may have not set a time for lunch, but Diego and all his siblings knew that if they weren’t there by one, then there’d be hell to pay in Pogo’s raised eyebrow and the strained corners of Mom’s smile. 

And Eudora hadn’t let him go until  _ eleven-thirty,  _ so the walk back to Gritty’s to pick up his car before the drive back to his place so he could shower and change, meant that Diego had rung the doorbell and rapped on the glass of his childhood home at barely five to one, cursing Eudora the entire time. 

Oh, he was  _ going _ to get her back for this. 

As expected, Pogo answered the door with a polite smile. “Master Diego,” He greeted, as Diego stepped into the foyer, “Lunch is just about to be served.” A beat, and Diego turned to the dining room automatically, but Pogo placed a hand on his arm, and began to lead him towards the stairs, “Not today, I’m afraid. It appears all of you will be eating in the kitchen,” A rare wry smile curved on Pogo’s lips, “Master Klaus insisted.”

“Yeah,” A smirk curved at the corner of Diego’s mouth as he followed Pogo down the steps, “He would.” 

Klaus had always labelled the dining room as Dad’s territory when they were kids, and the kitchen as Mom’s. It was why, when Luther or Five would sometimes do their studies at the dining table while Father flipped through his notes on his favorite chair, Klaus and Ben (and often Diego) would be found in the warmth of the kitchen, half reading their assignments and half playing cards as Mom baked in the background. 

For once, Klaus had a hold on his powers, and because of it, he held all the cards. With the ability to manifest Ben at his fingertips, even Luther wouldn’t say no if Klaus proposed eating downstairs instead. Diego had a feeling his brother would be taking advantage of that as much as he could.

What a little shit. 

When he and Pogo took their first steps into the kitchen, his siblings were all silent, staring at each other around a table like they were all fourteen and didn’t know how to talk to each other because Dad wouldn’t let them. As one, all of their eyes flickered up to Diego. 

“You were almost late,” Luther told him, tone halfway to admonishing. Diego snorted, and pulled up the nearest seat.

“The phrase you’re looking for is  _ on time, _ Luther.” 

“Where were you?”

_ "Getting arrest by my ex."  _ Diego considered saying just for kicks, but instead he turned his head and took a much more diplomatic approach. "None of your business, Luther, now fuck off."

Luther looked affronted, but before he could say anything else, a dry voice drolled, “Wow, it’s almost like I never died.” 

Diego’s head snapped over, a lump in his throat, and saw, across from him, the ghostly blue of his brother’s specter leaning on the wooden counter with his chin tucked into one hand and a worn paperback tucked into the other. “Ben,” He choked out. “I—uh.  _ Hi _ .” 

“Hey,” Ben wiggled his fingers at him, a gesture so  _ Klaus _ that Diego was almost taken aback by it. “Long time no see. Well,” a small smile appeared on his face, “For you, anyways.” 

“Uh, yeah,” Diego agreed, “It’s nice to see you.” 

_ “Nice.” _ Ben said, small smile stretching into a full grin. He elbowed Klaus teasingly, “It’s been ten years since I died a violent death at eighteen, and all my favorite brother can say is  _ nice.”  _

Diego’s face flushed with something that definitely was  _ not _ embarrassment, as Klaus scoffed, “In what world is  _ Diego _ your favorite brother?” Klaus flashed a look at him, “Full offense, by the way, considering I’m  _ literally _ the only person who talks to Ben 99% of the time.”

“Yeah,” Ben deadpanned at him, “Exactly.” 

“Lunch is ready!” Mom announced cheerily, cutting off any further squabbles by gently placing plates and glasses of water in front of each one of them. Including Ben. 

“Mom,” Allison started to say, “Ben can’t—”

“ _ Wait _ to eat lunch. It looks delicious, Mom.” Ben interrupted her, and shot Mom a soft smile before he mouthed across the table at their sister:  _ It’s fine. _

And then there was a wonderful,  _ blissful _ fifteen whole seconds of silence with nothing for Diego to listen to but the  _ clink _ of his own fork against china when Luther abruptly decided that the silence needs to be filled. Specifically, by him. 

“So, um…” Luther started out, voice just as lumbering and awkward as he was, “The food is great, Mom.”

“Delicious,” Ben pipes in, the edge of a sarcastic smile glinting in his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Luther agreed, but couldn’t quite meet Ben’s gaze, but tried an admirable few times nonetheless. Next to him, Five set his fork down with a long suffering sigh, and Diego couldn’t help but agree. 

“Just spit it out, Luther, “ Five advised, with all of the cranky wisdom of a senior citizen stuck in his prepubescent body. Luther hunched his shoulders together, and seemed to look anywhere but at their ghostly brother. “Get it over with, man.”

Luther shifted uncomfortably and stared at his plate, “Ben,” He said, “I’m, I’m really sorry about breaking your statue.” He lifted one hand to rub the back of his neck, and lifted his gaze slightly, so he was staring at Ben’s food instead of his own, “It was an accident, and I,” He swallowed, at last looking up to meet their brother’s flat gaze, “I’m really sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Ben repeated, voice somewhat dubious, and it was clear to Diego that Luther, shoulders hunched even tighter as if trying to curl himself into a very large and bulky ball, didn’t notice the way Klaus’s mouth upticked in amusement after exchanging a  _ look _ with their dead brother as Ben admitted, “I’m honestly more insulted that you think I’d be  _ mad  _ about that.”

“W-what?” 

“I’ve always hated that dumb statue,” Ben explained, and offered their brother a small smile, “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” 

“Are you sure?” Luther asked, and once Ben reassured him with a nod he slumped back into his chair with a sigh, “Okay, good.”

Klaus laughed at the bone deep relief in Luther’s voice, half choking on his food, and Diego met Ben’s gaze over the table. His brother’s smile stretched across his face, not a full grin, but close, and Diego found himself smiling broadly back.

…

To Diego’s surprise, lunch lasted three hours, even though old habits had them all finished their meal in one. They’d all been antsy, too. Five looked like he wanted to ditch as soon as the last plate was clear, while Vanya shifted in her seat and played with her hands like she was desperate for a violin to hold in them. 

But they sat there. And they  _ talked _ .

Not about anything serious, not after Luther’s stilted apology to Ben. Not awkward pleasantries, either, not when a cursory exchange within the first ten minutes had led to Diego bringing up the shooting last night at Gritty’s (which garnered a horrified reaction from most of his siblings) and Vanya quietly mentioning that she had a concert next week (which had nearly gone over worse. It had gained an interested reaction from almost none of them—although Klaus claimed he’d go if Vanya could score him a free ticket, which earned him an awkward smile and a promise to at least try.) 

But things like how their old missions had been turned into bedtime stories for Allison’s daughter, Claire, and how Luther still quite wasn’t used to Earth’s gravity again and kept breaking things in his constant miscalculation of force. Things like how Five, when probed to do something more than sigh in exasperation and stare at the clock, went on a rant about the lack of locks on Vanya’s window while their sister flushed in embarrassment and in a little bit of annoyance too. Things like how Diego regularly boxed (and won), like how Ben unabashedly nicked books from other ghosts to read (his current book, according to Klaus, had been stolen from a very vindictive nineteen year old girl who had died reading it in a car wreck, and spent a week harassing Klaus about it until he finally managed to chase her away), and how Klaus, fully aware of the irony from how he bashfully grinned at all of their teasing, had apparently spent the last eight and a half months working in a psychic shop to pay his bills. 

It was nice, shockingly so in a way that Diego wouldn’t admit it unless he had a knife to his throat or Mom asking him kindly. But it ends, like most things do, and unlike with most families none of them really have a guarantee that they might all come together like this again until someone else either dies or gets married (and even the latter is iffy, because if Diego remembered correctly, and he does, he and Vanya were the only two to show up to Allison’s wedding). 

Twice over, it’s as if Ben was the only thing keeping them together as the Umbrella Academy and as a family, because when Klaus winced in pain at half past four and Ben flickered out of sight, the light mood that had fallen over the kitchen disappeared and suddenly everyone had some place they needed to be. 

Including Klaus, who was apparently the only reason Five had stuck around for lunch as long as he did. 

“Sorry,” Klaus apologized, ignoring the way Five stared at him in irritation, “Five said he’d give me twenty bucks if I helped him out with this one thing and—” Klaus grinned at him sheepishly, and jangled the keys to his apartment in front of Diego’s face, “—do you mind dropping off Ben’s stuff at my place?”

Diego sighed, and snatched the keys from Klaus as aggressively as he could, “I told Mom I would.” He responded, and shoved the keys into his pocket. 

“Thank youuu!” Klaus trailed gratefully, and flashed him one last grin before Five latched onto Klaus’s arm and teleported them both away with an impatient  _ pop _ and a bright flash of blue.

… 

For a moment there, Diego had been too caught up in the ache of his shoulders and the crick in his neck from carrying three boxes of Ben’s belongings up three flights of stairs—because  _ of course  _ Klaus lived in a shitty, elevatorless apartment building—to spare more than an idle glance at his own door before he reached for the handle. 

It was by chance, really, that his gaze flickered over, expecting to see the thin wire taped between the door and the frame that he religiously retaped everytime he left the boiler room, because the one thing Diego managed to inherit from his dear deceased Father was paranoia. But Diego blinked, hand half an inch away from the handle, and realized that one end of the wire was hanging loose. 

He slipped one of his smaller silver throwing knives out of his holster and flipped it over in one hand while he used the other to carefully twist the doorknob before he nudged it open a crack with a brush of his knuckles. A quick glance in the room betrayed a familiar mass hunched in one of Diego’s chairs, while a sharp inhale in his nose revealed the lingering cologne his brother had been using since they were teenagers.

Diego let out a soft sigh, partial relief, partial exasperation, then with a swift jab of his wrist sent his knife flying into the room, and nudged it sharply around the pillars until it implanted itself in the cabinet next to the intruder with a dull  _ thud _ .

_ “Ow!” _ Luther hissed sharply, one hand reaching up where the blade nicked his ear as Diego opened the door fully and stepped over the threshold. 

Diego snorted, “I could smell it was you,” He informed his brother, palming his keys out of his pocket and tossing them onto the table, “Twenty years and they still haven’t discontinued your cologne, huh?” 

Luther pulled his hand away and stared at the blood with something like horror, and Diego had to hold back a sudden laugh. All six of them had at least one kill under their belt by the time they were fourteen—hell, even  _ Klaus _ , who hated creating ghosts even more than he did seeing them—and here his brother was looking at a slight nick of his ear like it was the end of the world. Come to think of it, he’d reacted much the same way when Diego had sliced him across the arm yesterday too. 

“Aw, Brother,” Diego let a teasing smile slip onto his face, fingers reaching to undo the straps of his harness, “Don’t look at me like that.” 

“You could have killed me,” Luther told him seriously, brushing off the blood on his sleeve as he stood, one of Diego’s posters oddly gripped in one hand. 

“Still don’t have any faith in my aim, huh?” Diego rolled his eyes, pulling the knife harness off of his head and placing it on the top of his dresser, “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.” 

Luther let loose a long suffering sigh, and Diego could feel him watching carefully even with his back turned as he untucked his smaller throwing knives from his pockets and the folds of his bracers. 

“It’s a nice place,” Luther offered up at last, and Diego turned to him with a fond smile, glancing over the walls of the boiler room knowingly. 

“I like it,” He told Luther, and meant it genuinely. He’d been living out of the boiler room and paying rent by sweeping the floors since he’d first moved out all those years ago and had little to his name besides his clothes and knives. Even with enough saved up to rent an apartment twice as nice as Klaus’s, Diego didn’t have any intention of moving out soon. But his brother had never been particularly good at ice breakers and small talk, so Luther barely waited a moment after Diego’s reply before diving in to the real reason why he’d broken in in the first place.

“So,” Luther started, accusation only tinting his words instead of drowning them, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Diego leaned back against the dresser and raised his eyebrows, “Tell you what?”

Luther held up the poster that he’d been holding. The one announcing his boxing match a few days ago. Ah, yeah. “That you were fighting the night that Dad died.” Luther handed the poster over to Diego when he gestured for it back, and he used the pin that had originally held it in place to retack it onto the pillar, “I even checked with the guys out there.”

“Didn’t we go down this road yesterday?” Diego raised his eyebrows, “I shouldn’t have to prove my innocence to you… none of us should.” 

Luther hesitated, eyes flickering to the floor and then back up to Diego, “Yeah.. you’re right…” He admitted, voice trailing, and for a moment Diego thought that was it, but there was a reason Luther had  _ broken in _ Diego’s apartment even after four of their siblings had stared Luther down incredulously when he implied that the thought one of them was the culprit. “... But—I just thought that—”

“Yeah.” Diego cut him off, voice low, “I know what you thought. Now…” Diego stepped forward and clapped Luther on the back, hard. His brother tensed, “You have a  _ nice day _ , brother.”

Luther’s hands clenched and unclenched in irritation, but he let out a low breath and nodded, already stepping away from Diego and towards the door, “All right.” He said.

Diego had a childish voice in the back of his head that he rarely acknowledged, one that sounded suspiciously like Klaus. But as Luther pulled the door of his apartment open and let it fall shut behind him, Diego had to pinch his lips shut to keep from talking.

Despite (lacking) evidence to the contrary, Diego had common sense. He knew it wasn’t a good idea to call  _ don’t let the door hit you on the way out _ at Luther, who had just accused him indirectly of murdering Dad twice in two days. 

That doesn’t mean he didn’t want to.

… 

Normally, after the kind of argument he’d just had with Eudora not even a full twenty-four hours ago, Diego would avoid her sector of the city like a plague until things between them had cooled down. But then his police radio crackled to life just as Diego was tying the laces of his boots with an update on a shooting that had apparently taken place in an empty department store the night before. And, well, Eudora’s district or  _ not _ Diego couldn’t help himself.

But they talk, and conversation isn’t half bad. They poke and prod at each other in only a way that lovers turned friends could, while Diego discovered that the truck driver he’d pestered Eudora about interviewing was found hanging dead, and after three suspicious machine gun shootings in under twenty-four hours in her sector of the city (the sector of the city most of Diego’s  _ family _ lives for fuck’s sake) that she was desperate enough to pick Diego’s mind for theories. 

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on who you asked, they seemed to have the same train of thought: the boy, the truck driver’s son. But Diego had a trail of distant thought, one that remembered how his brother upturned the house for coffee and then declared he was going out only for a shooting to occur at their old childhood haunt, and—no, it was stupid. 

A half-baked idea nearly as idiotic, if not more so, then his claims that Dad’s death meant anything beyond what it was. It was stupid, and Diego did his best to stomp on the idea and tuck it deep into the back of his mind where it would hopefully disappear over the next few days when Diego caught the guy and Eudora slapped on the cuffs.

And then after, when he’s barely five minutes home and just undoing the laces of his boots as the sun sets outside there’s a banging on his door, and an aggressive,  _ “Diego! Phone!” _ he merely resigns himself that this was fate handing him the distraction he needed. Of course, when he realizes that it’s Allison on the other end of the line, telling him that she and Luther were holding an emergency family meeting, it’s all Diego can do to not slam down the receiver and refuse.

He takes a deep breath instead, thinks of Klaus and Ben and how he might’ve been able to get them back a year ago, in nearly every sense of the word, if he’d just  _ listened to that phone call _ , and—well, it doesn’t matter if it’s Allison and Luther calling him up instead of Klaus and Ben, because Diego had made a half baked promise to himself as he left Klaus’s apartment that night to start trying again because as much as his family sucked there was a part of him that desperately missed it. 

So no matter how much he griped and groaned and complained to Allison about the damn meeting when he arrived at their childhood home as soon as she opened the door, his decision to go had already been set in stone the moment he picked up the call. 

Allison lead him to the living room where Luther and Vanya wait, the former anxiously tapping on the top of one of Dad’s old security screen monitors that he must have dragged out from the basement and the latter leaning awkwardly against a pillar and staring resolutely at the ground. Diego has a bad feeling about this.

“The others should be here soon,” Allison told him, “I called Klaus and he’s still hanging out with Five, so they should be teleporting in—”

There was a pop, a flash of blue, and then Klaus was standing in the middle of the room, still half swaying from the teleportation. Five and Ben were nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, where’s Five?” Vanya stepped closer, brows furrowed, “Is he—”

Klaus waved her off with a flap of his hand, “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Still busy, y’know? He said he’d drop me off here and keep going at it.” He shrugged, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets, “You weren’t exactly forthcoming about—whatever this is—” Klaus waved his jerked his head, “—on the phone, so our dear brother came to the conclusion it was a waste of  _ his _ time, but not mine, so he dropped me off.”

“No Ben?” Luther asked, looking up from the television, “Did you leave him with Five? Is that why we can’t see him? Klaus, this is important, we  _ need _ all of us here—”

Klaus held up both of his hands, flashing them all with his Ouija board ink, “Whoa, whoa, Luther,” Klaus interrupted, “Hold your horses, man! I’m just used to speaking for one since I don’t want to get thrown in the loony bin. Ben’s right here—” Klaus slung his arm around empty air and leaned his weight on it, “—but I used up all my juice on lunch yesterday, so ex-nay on corporeal Ben for a couple days, comprende?” 

“Alright,” Luther allowed, “That’s good, I guess, but there’s still the matter of Five--”

Klaus held up his arms in a large ‘X’, “No good,” He shook his head, “If Five cares enough to ask he’ll track one of us down later, but for now just—” Klaus gestured at Luther for him to move along, but their brother still looked hesitant.

“I can update him later,” Vanya chimed in, “Or anyone who sees him, really, but. It’s just, Allison said it was important, right? So—”

“It is,” Luther agreed, hesitance draining out of his frame, “Alright, come here. You all need to watch this.” 

Diego’s bad feeling quickly snowballed into a terrible one that ate at his stomach like a particularly vicious acid; screw  _ trying _ with his family, goddamn, there was a  _ reason  _ Diego spent most of his time avoiding his siblings, and it was because they were all bad idea  _ machines _ .

Case in point? Vanya’s book, Klaus’s terrible taste in sandwiches (and formerly, general lifestyle choices), and  _ Luther trying to convince them all that their sweet Mother murdered their sociopath of a Father.  _

Luther makes them watch the looped video of Dad’s heart attack (and Mom’s subsequent witnessing) three times before Vanya interrupted him.

“I mean, do you really think Mom would hurt Dad?” She asked, wringing her hands together as she glanced up at their brother. 

“You haven’t been home in a long time, Vanya.” Luther told her, as if he hadn’t spent the last few years on the moon himself, “Maybe you don’t know Grace anymore.”

“Don’t talk about Mom like she’s a stranger, Luther,” Klaus said, voice like ice, “Because in case you’re forgetting,  _ she’s _ the one that raised us. Not Dad.”

“In case  _ you’re  _ forgetting, Klaus,” Luther shot back, jabbing his arm towards the still looping video, “It doesn’t matter when Grace probably poisoned him!” 

“ _ If _ he was poisoned it would have been shown in the coroner’s report” Diego interjected, teeth gritted, pulling out one of his throwing knives to spin between his fingers 

“Well, I don’t need a report to tell me what I can see with my own eyes,” Luther protested. 

“The low gravity must have messed with your vision.” Diego snarled, stepping forward to aggressively tap the screen with the edge of his knife as the security feed looped again, “Look closer,  _ Luther.  _ Dad has his monocle. Mom stands up. Monocle’s gone.” Diego stepped away from the screen, turning away so he could lean against the edge of the table as he raised a challenging eyebrow in their brother’s direction. “Can you see it now? Or do I need to get you a pair of glasses?”

“Hn, burn,” Klaus snorted, arms crossed and voice pitched in such a way that Diego figured he’d only meant Ben to hear it. 

“She wasn’t poisoning him.” Diego continued, nails digging into the handle of his knife, “She was taking it. To clean it.” 

“Than where is it?” Luther demanded, and shook his head, “No, I’ve searched the house, including her things, she doesn’t have it.” 

“That’s because I took it from her. After the funeral.” Diego said somewhat sheepishly, raising his knife in admittance. 

“You’ve had the monocle this whole time?” Allison’s shoulders clenched as she turned to face him, “What the hell, Diego?” 

“Give it to me!” Luther demanded, holding out his hand as he took a threatening step forward. 

“I threw it away,” Diego said, dismissing him with a shrug and casual wave of his knife. 

“You  _ what? _ ” Luther said, fists clenching, and Diego spoke his next words with a lingering awareness in the back of his mind that they might just have another repeat of the fight at Dad’s funeral.

“Look,” Diego started, flipping his knife over in his hand in a less than subtle threat, “I knew that if you found it on Mom, you’d lose your shit,” Diego pointed the knife at his brother’s chest, “Just like you’re doing right now.”

“Diego, you son of a bitch—” Luther stepped towards him with vicious intent and Diego automatically retreated until the edge of the table was digging into the small of his back as he reversed his grip and held the knife at cheek level. 

“Hey—No—Calm down—” Vanya’s arm jerked out and she pressed her palm flat against Luther’s chest to stop him. She breathed out, “Look… I know Dad wasn’t exactly an open book—” A peal of breathy laughter from Klaus’s direction interrupted her, but Vanya only sighed before moving on, “—But I do remember one thing he said: Mom was, well, designed to be a caretaker, but… also as a protector.” 

“What does that mean?” Allison’s posture straightened.

“Well, she was, uh, programmed to intervene if someone’s life was in jeopardy,” Vanya said, and they were all silent for a moment as it sunk in. 

“Well, if her hardware is degrading…” Luther trailed, and by his tone of voice Diego just  _ knew _ whatever he said was going to make him want to gut his brother, “Then we need to turn her off.” 

_ “Whoa, whoa, whoa _ —” Diego started, not stopping when Klaus began to shriek over him. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Luther, she’s our  _ Mom _ —”

“— _ whoa _ , wait—” 

“—you may not suddenly give two shits about her, but  _ I _ do, and I’m not letting you—”

“She’s not just a vacuum cleaner you can throw in a closet.” Diego snarled, stepping closer to Luther and jabbing his knife at his chest, “She feels things, I’ve seen it!”

“She  _ loves _ us!” Klaus interjected, “And you—and you want to—”

“She just stood there,” Luther said, “And  _ let our Father die. _ And neither of you care about that!” 

“I’m with Luther,” Allison said, stepping forward. 

“Surprise, surprise,” Diego sneered. 

“Shut up,” Allison told him, “I love Mom, but if she’s glitching so bad to be going against her basic programming then it would be better if we—” She bit her lip, “—if we—”

“Oh, don’t pretend you have a heart now!” Diego said, “She’s our  _ Mom _ and you w-want w-w-want” His stutter suddenly resurfaced with a vengeance, and if Diego could’ve managed it without sounding like a fool, he would’ve sworn. 

“Hey, come on, guys, stop this!”  Vanya held up a hand, her voice quiet and commanding, “Shouting at each other isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Stop trying to play mediator!” Diego growled at her, “I have every damn right to shout when Luther decided to put Mom’s life up to a  _ vote _ like some sort of sadistic bastard!”

“Shut up, Diego,” Allison repeated firmly, and then turned to their sister, “Well, Vanya? Where do you stand in all of this?”

“I—I don’t—” Vanya stuttered, face suddenly flush with panic. 

“Yeah, she shouldn’t get a vote,” Diego dismissed her with a wave of his hand and turned his back on her as he began to pace. 

“I was gonna say that I agree with you!” Vanya insisted, voice strong and  firm for once instead of soft and quiet. Diego tilted his head at her, considering. 

“Okay. She should get a vote.” Diego amended, “So that’s two for killing Mom, and two against.” He turned and raised an eyebrow in Klaus’s direction, where he’d suddenly gone eerily silent despite his loud protests. He was staring intently at the empty space next to him and hissing something under his breath, so Diego snapped his fingers twice to get his and Ben’s attention both, “Oi, Ghost Twins!”

Klaus jerked his head up, and Diego almost took a step back at the way his brother’s eyes were shining with almost tears, “Yeah?” Klaus said, voice calm and breathy. He blinked his eyes a few times and shook his head slightly, “Sorry, what?” 

“Mom, Klaus,” Luther said impatiently, “What you were just shouting your ass off about a minute ago. So what’s it gonna be Klaus?” Luther tilts his chin up in a defiant challenge, because if Diego’s vote is obvious, than Klaus is barely a single step behind him in stout defense of Mom, and Luther still thinks that they’re all eighteen and he’s the leader who can put them in their place with a single look. 

“Screw you, Luther!” Klaus snapped, voice halfway to shrill, “You’re not killing Mom! I’m with Diego and so is Ben!” He pitched sideways after that, stumbled in such an odd and random manner that if Diego wasn’t so focused on defending Mom, already halfway turned from his brother to jab a finger in Luther’s direction, he might have noticed it mimicked the way Ben had shoved Klaus off of the edge of the armchair two nights earlier. 

“Four to two,” Diego says, with a smug sort of finality, “You’re outnumbered.” 

“Wait,” Allison cut him off, “Vote’s not final yet.”

“What?” Diego asked, bafflement washing over anger for a brief moment, “What the hell are you trying to pull Allison? The vote’s four to  _ two _ —”

“Five’s not here,” Allison told him, “The whole family has to vote. We owe each other that.” 

Diego’s eye twitched. He didn’t know whether to tell her off for her  _ obvious _ time stall tactics (no doubt hoping that she could convince Vanya to take her side since he and Klaus were firmly resolute, and Ben right along with them), or to ask her if all that time in Hollywood had caused all common sense to drain out of her ears because no matter which side Five took the vote wouldn’t change. Mom  _ wasn’t _ dying by their hands. Diego would make sure of it. 

“Right.” Luther agreed, nearly always willing to listen to Allison. 

“Yeah, we should wait,” Vanya confirmed, nearly always willing to take the path of least resistance. 

And with that silent confirmation they disperse. Allison and Luther retreat up the stairs together in silence. Klaus headed for the door, jaw clenched and hands stuffed stiffly into his pockets. He doesn’t say goodnight, or even wave his  _ GOODBYE _ palm in a vague farewell. Concern crashes over Diego like a wave, and the force of the feeling washes him away so fast that he’s halfway to taking a step in his brother’s direction before his vision catches and—

Mom was standing in the hall, just at the edge of the living room with her hands pressed into the front of her apron, and smiling gently at him and Vanya.

“Hey,” Diego said as he stepped over to her and placed a gentle hand on her arm, “How long you been here?” 

“You all seem upset…” Mom trailed, dazed in a way that had the tightness in Diego’s chest easing slightly with relief because  _ Mom hadn’t heard _ , “I’ll make cookies.” She tells him and Vanya definitively, and something in Diego prevents him from protesting as she turned back to the kitchen stairs.

“Do you ever wonder…” Vanya starts, while the two of them watch Mom’s back as she goes, “All those moments with Mom…  the things she said, the things she did. Like, was it her, or was it really Dad?” 

“What are you talking about?” Diego jerked his head in her direction. 

“Well, he built her.” Vanya shrugged, “And he programmed her to be a Mom, to be  _ our _ Mom. Sometimes…  when I look at her I just see him.” Diego’s shoulder’s stiffened, and he had to bite back a scathing remark. Vanya had taken his side—no, she’d taken  _ Mom’s _ side. He could afford to spare some of his patience on her. 

“Maybe that was true at first,” Diego told her with a sigh, “But she evolved. She’s more now, then what he made her. Whatever Luther thinks… Mom loves us more than anything.” 

“Well, how do you know?” Vanya asked, voice achingly soft and gentle. As kids, as teenagers, and still as an adult that tone always made Diego want to snap something in half. But he takes a short breath, thinks of Mom and her beam whenever he was getting well with one of his siblings, and explained:

“Because Dad only loved himself.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I warned you guys I was a slow writer lmao
> 
> Really, though, I was genuinely blown away by the response for this?? More thank 1.5k kudos already?? I adore each and every one of you amazing people who left me a comment, even if it was just a keyboard smash, thank you so much for all your kind words and being patient with me!
> 
> In terms of the POV switch, I'm only going to rotate between the Klaus, Diego, and Ben because Favoritism (and also actual narrative reasons like they're the ones most effected by the change but also Favoritism). Next chapter is a mix of Klaus and Diego and then the chapter after that is planned to be all three of them because chapter four is when Klaus goes to Vietnam and ooo boy that's gonna be a lot of fun.
> 
> Not for them though. 
> 
> Anyways, please leave me a comment telling me what you think! Or just scream at me!! I have a tumblr at @dragonsarecats if you want to message me and an art/writing blog at @alldragonsarecats where I post preview snippets of the next chapter so if you're interested check that out!! :D 
> 
> Shout out to Greeninjagal for beta-ing this chapter for me.
> 
> Chapter title is from Ghost of You (which is ironically the title of my PacRim fic... if you couldn't tell I really like this song)

**Author's Note:**

> This was a genuine monster of a first chapter, god. I'm kinda praying the other chapters aren't this long because it's probably gonna be between 5-10 chapters but by the way this one went... well, this fic'll probably be long.
> 
> Also, just a heads up! If you didn't read the tags there's no Klaus/Dave romance here, partially because I suck at writing romance, and partially because I want to focus on Ben and Klaus's relationship instead so there's some nice canon divergence that prevents Klaus and Dave from getting that close in the first place. Don't worry though, Dave's storyline will still be plenty painful. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you liked the chapter! Feel free to shoot me a comment here or message me on my tumbr @dragonsarecats to tell me what you think, or just to talk about Ben and Klaus because if it wasn't obvious already I'm a sucker for their characters, ha.
> 
> I'm gonna try and update somewhat regularly, maybe twice a month based on my writing speed, but despite my track record I have every intention of finishing the baby! Hope you all like it! :)
> 
> Title is from Vampire Money by MCR (they have so many lyrics that fit this show, my god was it hard to choose) and chapter title from The End

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [All the Things That You Never Ever Told Me, And All the Smiles That Are Ever Gonna Haunt Me (Never Coming Home, Never Coming Home)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18436880) by [Huntress8611](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress8611/pseuds/Huntress8611)




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